YORK  SOCIETY 

^         m, 

ON  PARADE 


RALPH 


[See  page  114. 
UNITED      IN      THE      HOLY       BONDS      OF      WALTZ      OR      TWO-STEP 


ON  PARADE 


RALPH  EULITZER 


WITH   ILLUSTRATIONS  BY 

HOWARD  CHANDLER  CHRISTY 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

M  C  MX 


Copyright,  1910,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS 

All  rights  reserved 


Published  February,  1910 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

UNITED  IN  THE  HOLY  BONDS  OF  WALTZ 

OR  TWO-STEP Frontispiece 

THE  LADIES  LEAVE  THE  STRICKEN 

FIELD Facing  p.  30 

THEIR  MINDS  GROPE  TOWARD  ONE 
ANOTHER  ALONG  A  TENUOUS 
BRIDGE  OF  WORDS "  44 

THE  "HORSE-SHOE"  AT  ITS  BEST    .     .       "         68 

A  YOUNG  MAN  OF  EXCELLENT  FAMILY 

BUT  NO  FORTUNE,  AND OF  NO 

PROSPECTS "  72 

APPRAISED  FOR  THE  BEAUTY  OF  THEIR 
FACES  OR  THE  BOUNTY  OF  THEIR 
FAMILIES "  114 

REST  AND  REFRESHMENT  AWAIT  AT  THE 

SUPPER-TABLES  BELOW  ....  "  Il8 

AT  SUPPER  A  SUPERFICIAL  FAMILIARITY 

EXISTS  .  "          212 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY  ON 
PARADE 


NEW  YORK  SOCIETY 
ON    PARADE 


IN  European  nations  "Society"  is  the 
formal  intercourse  between  members 
of  the  upper  class — the  aristocracy. 
With  these  aristocracies  Society  is  an 
intermittent    condition    created    by    the 
temporary   meeting  of  persons   of  per- 
manent   rank — persons    who    possessed 
their  rank  before  their  association  made 
Society,  and  retain  it  after  their  separation 
for  the  time  being  ends  Society. 

If  every  member  of  the  upper  class  in 
Europe  simultaneously  entered  upon  the 
[i] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

life  of  a  recluse  for  one  year,  European 
Society  would  for  that  year  cease  to  exist. 
But  at  the  year's  end  when  these  men 
and  women  again  came  together  in  for- 
mal reunions,  and  thus  again  formed 
"Society,"  they  would  all,  or  practically 
all,  possess  the  same  membership  of  their 
upper  class,  and  would  each  occupy  the 
identical  relative  position  in  their  Society 
as  before  their  year's  isolation. 

If,  however,  the  same  catastrophe  over- 
took New  York,  short  indeed  would  be 
the  roster  of  those  families  which  could 
emerge  with  positions  undisturbed  and 
prestige  unshaken,  still  standing  like 
fashionable  monoliths  amid  the  rack  and 
ruin. 

For  while  European  Society  consists 
of  a  deep  mill-pond  of  assured  position 
with  a  froth  of  probationary  parvenus, 
New  York  Society  consists  of  a  whirlpool 

[2] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

of  tentative  novices  with  a  sediment  of 
permanent  members. 

Instead,  indeed,  of  having  an  aristoc- 
racy whose  caste  is  beyond  question  and 
beyond  change  and  whose  mutual  hos- 
pitalities constitute  Society,  New  York 
has  an  "Aristocracy"  whose  elevation  is 
largely  artificial,  whose  membership  is 
largely  arbitrary,  and  whose  existence 
vitally  depends  upon  those  activities 
which  are  known  as  social  functions.  In 
other  words,  while  in  Europe  the  mutual 
entertainments  of  an  inherently  stable 
upper  class  create  Society,  in  New  York 
the  constant  contortions  of  Society  are 
indispensable  to  create  and  maintain  a 
precarious  upper  class;  while  in  Europe 
the  pleasures  of  Society  are  among  the 
prerogatives  of  rank,  in  New  York  the 
pleasure  of  "rank"  is  the  inducement  to 
Society. 

[31 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

The  contrast  between  the  two  species 
of  Society  is  precisely  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  amateur  athlete  who  exercises 
for  his  amusement  and  the  professional 
athlete  who  exercises  for  a  living. 

Thus  in  New  York  beneath  the  frivolity 
and  flippancy  with  which  Society  bediz- 
zens  itself,  like  the  paint  and  tights  in 
which  a  chorus  girl  must  do  her  work, 
that  Society  is  transacting  deadly  earnest 
business. 

There  is,  no  doubt,  much  spontaneous 
pleasure  incidental  to  this  business — 
debutantes  may  dance,  gliding  and  collid- 
ing with  unalloyed  ecstasy;  gourmets  may 
gormandize,  and  tipplers  tipple,  taking 
unreservedly  what  the  gods  give  them. 
But,  ever  present,  all-pervading,  gleam- 
ing in  the  glossy  floor,  pulsating  in  the 
rhythmic  music,  flavoring  the  subtle 
sauce,  bubbling  in  the  foaming  glass,  re- 
[4] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

echoing  through  the  banal  conversation, 
is  the  spirit  of  desperate  and  dogged 
travail  of  those  who,  to  the  cause  of 
"class,"  are  devoting  their  lives,  their 
fortunes,  and  their  sacred  honor. 

All  that  may  be  said  about  these  men 
and  women  is  said  of  them  in  their  of- 
ficial capacity  as  members  of  "Society." 
In  whatever  private  lives  they  lead  they 
are  neither  under  observation  nor  criti- 
cism. As  individuals  in  the  company  of 
their  families  or  friends,  in  their  informal 
hospitalities  and  amusements,  many  of 
the  women  and  most  of  the  men  are 
kindly  unaffected  human  beings,  per- 
forming normal  functions  from  natural 
motives,  liking  each  other  without  pre- 
meditation, disliking  each  other  without 
deliberation,  cultivating  each  other  in- 
stinctively, cutting  each  other  impulsively, 
enjoying  themselves,  and  boring  them- 
[5] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

selves  with  equal  spontaneity;  eating 
their  daily  cake  a  trifle  more  lightly  than 
their  less  favored  fellow  citizens  earn 
their  daily  bread,  but  differing  from  these 
latter  much  less  than  do  such  classes  in 
other  nations.  While  they  live  their 
lives  of  private  domesticity  or  of  private 
diversion,  any  praise  or  censure  levelled 
at  them  would  be  merely  an  impertinence 
levelled  at  the  human  nature  of  the 
human  race.  But  when  the  call-boy 
runs  the  rounds,  and  most  of  these  same 
gentlemen  and  ladies  strut  or  scuttle 
from  their  private  dressing-rooms  to  form 
their  tableaux  on  the  public  stage,  and 
go  through  all  the  mummery  of  mimes, 
plodding  or  pirouetting  through  the  roles 
assigned  them  by  the  playwright  Vanity, 
then  in  their  professional  degree  they 
become  fair  game  for  any  philosopher 
or  fool. 

[6] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

We  have  seen  the  fundamental  distinc- 
tion between  a  European  upper  class 
which  finds  in  Society  the  relaxation  from 
its  responsibilities  or  the  pastime  of  its 
leisure,  and  those  citizens  of  New  York 
who  make  of  Society  a  responsibility  from 
which  there  is  no  relaxation,  a  pastime 
from  which  there  is  no  leisure. 

If  we  bear  this  distinction  in  mind  we 
shall  be  able  to  study  New  York  Society 
with  some  degree  of  intelligent  sympathy, 
if  not  of  emotional  compassion.  For  the 
struggle  for  self-preservation  of  even  the 
humblest  living  things  is  no  laughing 
matter. 


THE  DINNER 

THE  dinner  is  probably  the  formal 
entertainment  in  which  New  York 
Society  shows  to  the  best  attain- 
able advantage. 

It  is  true  that  the  conditions  are  not 
such  as  to  make  possible  those  intellectual 
pleasures  which  are  supposed  to  be  a 
paramount  element  of  the  ideal  dinner. 
Yet  the  sympathetic  and  collective  en- 
joyment by  numerous  guests  of  adroitly 
prepared  food  and  judiciously  laid  wine 
can  surely  pass  muster  as  an  entirely 
appropriate  object  for  a  social  congrega- 
tion. And  as  wealth  alone  is  needed  to 
[8] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

provide  superlative  dishes  and  vintages 
through  the  agencies  of  a  deft  chef  and  a 
discriminating  wine  agent,  and  as  rela- 
tively little  training  is  needed  to  equip 
nervously  intelligent  palates  with  a  capac- 
ity for  critical  appreciation,  a  dinner  may 
be  said  to  furnish  more  spontaneous 
pleasure  to  its  participants  than  any  other 
variety  of  formal  entertainment,  and 
therefore  to  possess  the  most  legitimate 
reason  for  existence. 

A  formal  dinner  does  not  take  place 
till  half-past  eight  o'clock.  This  com- 
parative lateness  of  the  hour  has  numer- 
ous advantages.  It  gives  the  ladies  time 
to  rest  in  the  late  afternoon  from  the 
fatigue  of  their  earlier  duties  before  pre- 
paring for  the  responsibilities  of  the  com- 
ing hours.  It  gives  many  who  have  not 
had  quite  so  many  duties  to  exhaust  them, 
or  who  may  have  pusillanimously  shirked 
[9] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

those  duties,  a  pleasant  hour's  play-time 
with  their  children,  while  others  it  gives 
a  lucky  moment  in  which  to  kiss  their 
little  ones  a  simultaneous  good-morning 
and  good-night.  It  gives  them  all  an 
opportunity  to  resuscitate  delicate  appe- 
tites from  the  stupor  in  which  afternoon 
tea  has  left  them  buried. 

This  dining  hour  also  enables  the 
majority  of  the  younger  men  who  have 
left  work  and  Wall  Street  for  their  clubs 
between  three  and  four  o'clock,  to  keep 
themselves  in  fine  physical  condition  by 
playing  wholesome  games  of  court-tennis, 
"squash,"  or  racquets,  or  by  betting  on 
the  wholesome  games  that  other  men  are 
playing.  It  gives  a  chance  to  the  small 
minority,  principally  lawyers,  who  are 
not  in  Wall  Street  and  who  work  till  six 
o'clock,  to  bathe  and  dress  for  dinner  at 
their  clubs  instead  of  having  to  dress 
[10] 


without  a  bath  at  their  offices.  These 
latter  from  among  their  scanty  ranks 
generally  furnish  the  only  oases  of  in- 
tellect which  blossom  in  society  amid 
deserts  of  "brains"  and  mirages  of 
mentality.  So  any  hour  of  dining  which 
will  tend  to  lure  these  ioslated  intellects 
into  leavening  Society's  batter  of  common 
sense  and  good  nature  is  fortunate  for  the 
dinner  and  is  rightly  to  be  encouraged. 

This  hour  has  a  further  advantage  in 
permitting  these  young  men,  after  their 
exercise,  their  betting,  and  their  bathing 
have  been  accomplished,  and  all  whom 
wedlock  has  not  forced  to  dress  at  home, 
are  clad  for  the  impending  occasion,  to 
sit  at  ease  with  their  more  elderly  fellow 
guests-to-be,  and  possess  themselves,  in 
slow  luxurious  gulps,  of  the  ardent  mellow- 
ness of  successive  cocktails.  An  accurate 
accumulation  of  these,  discreetly  adapted 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  each  participant's  just  requirements, 
will  markedly  aid  the  coming  function's 
brilliance.  For  these  stimulating  com- 
pounds not  only  sharply  increase  the 
appetite,  thus  enhancing  powers  of  en- 
joying the  material  ingredients  of  even 
the  most  formal  dinner,  but  at  the  same 
time  they  encourage  to  abnormal  ac- 
tivity any  mental  powers  which  may 
lie  within  their  reach.  They  cannot 
change  a  brain  into  an  intellect,  it  is  true, 
but  they  can  flick  it  into  such  a  brisk 
brain  that  it  may  give  a  very  creditable 
imitation  of  an  intellect.  They  cannot 
give  it  ideals,  but  they  may  give  it  en- 
thusiasms; they  cannot  give  it  thought, 
but  they  may  give  it  fancies;  they  cannot 
give  it  acquired  knowledge,  but  they  can 
give  it  improvised  theories;  they  cannot 
give  it  wit,  but  they  can  give  it  jocularity. 
These  attributes,  when  added  to  the 

[12] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

natural  alertness  of  intelligence  which  is 
the  rule  in  American  minds,  may  help  to 
make  the  subsequent  dinner  pass  amid 
a  table  talk  so  copious  and  so  vivacious 
that  it  is  a  serious  question  whether  it 
has  not  the  right  to  rank  among  dinner 
conversations. 

The  scene  of  a  formal  dinner  is  be- 
coming more  and  more  exclusively  con- 
fined to  the  region  between  Central  Park 
and  Park  Avenue  on  the  west  and  east, 
and  Fiftieth  Street  and  Eightieth  Street 
on  the  south  and  north,  as  New  York 
Society  deserts  its  older  habitations  to 
concentrate  in  that  locality. 

A  long  strip  of  carpet  winds  its  way 
from  the  front  door  across  the  sidewalk 
to  the  curb,  sheltered  by  an  awning  and 
presided  over  by  a  groom  whose  function 
it  is  to  open  the  doors  of  carriages  and 
automobiles  which  possess  no  grooms 
[13] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

of  their  own,  and  to  summon  these  con- 
veyances at  the  evening's  end.  He  can 
also  inform  arrivals  at  what  hour  carriages 
are  being  ordered  to  return,  and  thus  can 
give  them  an  idea  how  early  they  may 
depart  without  rudeness  if  they  are  being 
bored,  or  how  late  they  may  stay  on  if 
they  are  being  amused  or  are  winning  at 
bridge. 

The  guests  generally  begin  to  reach  the 
seat  of  hospitality  about  ten  minutes  after 
the  hour  of  invitation.  Very  frequently, 
however,  an  old-fashioned  couple,  who 
still  live  on  Washington  Square  or  in  its 
vicinity,  and  who  have  decided  to  ex- 
periment with  a  taxi-cab  as  a  far-sighted 
economy  for  such  a  distance,  whirl  up  to 
their  destination  a  good  ten  minutes 
before  the  appointed  hour,  and  are  doom- 
ed to  spend  those  minutes  in  repeatedly 
circumvolving  the  city  block  on  which 
[Hi 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

their  hosts  reside,  while  the  dial  of  their 
premature  conveyance  jumps  spasmod- 
ically for  every  circumvolution.  Fre- 
quently, too,  the  inmates  of  the  next- 
door  house  (for  not  only  is  the  mutual 
identity  of  neighbors  occasionally  known, 
but  they  are  at  times  on  terms  of  social 
intimacy)  are  the  last  to  arrive,  some 
thirty  minutes  late,  in  a  paroxysm  of 
apology  and  haste,  as  the  result  of  too 
implicit  a  faith  in  proximity  as  an  antidote 
to  procrastination. 

Between  these  two  extremes  of  punc- 
tuality and  lateness  broughams,  landaus, 
and  limousines  deposit  their  fashionable 
freight,  while  occasional  couples  walk 
over  from  beyond  Park  Avenue,  where 
some  of  Society's  least  wealthy  and  most 
creditable  members  and  nearly  all  of 
Society's  horses  dwell  intermingled  in 
thoroughbred  harmony. 
[15] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

This,  incidentally,  is  one  of  the  most 
praiseworthy  features  of  New  York  So- 
ciety. Not  that  it  locates  its  horses 
among  its  most  creditable  members,  but 
that,  being  a  Society  chiefly  created  and 
preserved  by  money,  it  should  be  broad- 
minded  enough  to  welcome  cordially  to  its 
ranks  so  many  persons  of  limited  means. 

As  the  guests  enter  the  house  the  ladies 
are  ushered  into  one  cloak-room  and  the 
men  into  another.  The  men  go  through 
the  simple  operation  of  taking  off  their 
overcoats  and  hats  and  getting  a  check 
by  which  to  reclaim  them.  They  are 
also  handed  a  little  stiff  envelope  con- 
taining a  card  which  each  man  draws 
forth  as  gingerly  as  he  would  the  fifth 
card  to  four  of  a  suit.  They  then  issue 
from  their  cloak-room,  and  each  of  them 
who  accompanies  a  lady  stands,  a  monu- 
ment of  expectant  patience,  gazing  wist- 
[16] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

fully  at  the  door  behind  which  the  mys- 
teries are  taking  place  on  whose  accom- 
plishment he  waits.  When  the  object 
of  his  patience  finally  radiates  his  view 
he  follows  her,  generally  up  an  imposing 
sweep  of  stairs,  intently  scrutinizing  the 
edge  of  her  train  upon  which  Nemesis  is 
hounding  him  to  place  his  foot.  Near  the 
head  of  the  staircase  they  find  the  hostess 
surrounded  by  a  bevy  of  Beau  Brummels. 
As  they  approach,  the  most  distinguished- 
looking  of  these,  stepping  forward,  enun- 
ciates their  names  in  tones  of  great 
volume  and  distinctness,  and  the  mistress 
of  the  house  welcomes  them  with  that 
indelible  smile  which  hostesses  share 
exclusively  with  coiffeurs'  models  and 
with  Christian  martyrs.  They  then 
mingle  with  the  guests  who  have  pre- 
ceded them,  the  men,  if  they  know  the 
ladies  whose  names  are  on  their  cards, 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

painstakingly  avoiding  them  till  it  is  time 
to  take  them  in  to  dinner,  and,  if  they 
by  chance  do  not  know  them,  desperately 
striving  to  discover  their  identity;  the 
ladies  suffering  themselves  to  be  avoided 
and  ultimately  discovered  with  a  suavity 
that  veils  the  interest  they  feel  in  this 
marriage  in  miniature.  For,  after  all,  a 
dinner  spent  between  two  bores  may  seem 
as  infinite  in  alternating  dulness  as  a 
life  spent  between  two  husbands,  and 
there  is  no  Dakota  for  the  dinner 
guest. 

Then  the  butler,  with  a  remarkable 
mixture  of  calculation  and  intuition, 
knows  that  the  latest  arrivals  are  indeed 
the  last,  and,  with  unostentatious  irony, 
announces  to  the  hostess  the  readiness  of 
that  dinner  which,  during  the  past  half- 
hour,  has  budded,  blossomed,  and  all 
but  withered,  saved  only  by  the  frantic 
[18] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

ministrations  of  a  heroic  chef  and  his 
devoted  kitchen  maids. 

The  prandial  procession  forms  and 
gracefully  wends  its  way  into  the  dining- 
room,  where  those  guests  known  by  sight 
to  the  servants  are  quickly  pointed  to 
their  places,  while  those  not  thus  privi- 
leged wander  about  like  lost  and  aimless 
spirits,  till  finally,  by  a  prolonged  process 
of  elimination,  they  find  and  sink  into 
their  proper  seats. 

The  first  fifteen  minutes  of  the  dinner 
are  generally  its  best.  For  hunger  is 
essentially  a  spontaneous  emotion:  its 
gratification  is  inevitably  a  natural  op- 
eration. It  is  impossible  to  crave  food 
with  any  ulterior  design,  it  is  impossible 
to  eat  food  with  any  complex  calculation. 
The  animal  appetite  does  not  lend  itself 
to  formality:  Society  shares  it  with  the 
dumb  brutes  and  the  lower  classes. 
[19] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

Dowager  or  debutante,  captain  of  in- 
dustry or  floor  broker,  while  they  still 
their  hunger  they  are  to  that  extent  sin- 
cere. And  as,  fortunately,  the  majority 
of  the  guests  are  hungry  during  the  first 
quarter  of  an  hour  of  dinner,  an  atmos- 
phere of  sincerity  prevails  about  the  table. 

The  oysters  come  and  succulently 
vanish;  the  soup  steams  fragrantly  and 
softly  gurgles  to  oblivion;  the  fish  leaves 
but  a  skeleton  behind.  And  all  this  while 
frank  pleasure  permeates  the  Gothic 
dining-room. 

Some  scattered  exceptions  among  the 
guests,  the  victims  of  infirmities  of  body 
or  afflictions  of  temperament,  wonder 
whether  the  tapestries  upon  the  walls 
are  really  Gobelins;  whether  the  golden 
candelabra  on  the  table  were  wedding- 
presents;  whether  the  mauve  satin  show- 
ing through  the  lace  insertions  of  the  table- 

[20] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY  ON   PARADE 

cloth  is  vulgar  or  fashionable;  whether 
the  orchestra  which  is  murmuring  from 
the  hall  is  Sherry's  or  Franko's.  The 
hostess  racks  her  brain  beneath  her  smiles 
to  decide  whether  there  are  enough  of  these 
exceptions  present  to  jeopardize  her  en- 
tertainment's success. 

But  the  majority  of  the  guests  are 
devoting  themselves  to  their  uncom- 
plicated pleasures,  enjoying  these  pleas- 
ures with  the  grace  of  breeding  or  of 
manners  which  saves  them  from  all  taint 
of  gluttony,  sustaining  the  conversation 
in  somewhat  automatic  intermezzos  that 
fill  the  leisure  moments  between  the 
courses,  and,  while  these  early  courses 
hold  the  stage,  continuing  their  discourse 
in  intermittent  obligates,  a  concession 
by  nature  to  civilization,  by  the  palate 
to  the  tongue. 

But  now  the  supreme  moments  of  the 

[21] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

dinner  are  done,  for  with  the  entree  comes 
the  exit  of  the  polite  but  whole-souled 
self-abandonment  of  diners  to  dinner. 

Hunger  gives  way  to  fastidiousness, 
unreasoning  pleasure  to  analyzing  ap- 
preciation. Part  of  the  enjoyment  that 
is  to  come  is,  no  doubt,  still  legitimate, 
for  when  men  and  women  are  formally 
asked  to  an  elaborate  dinner  they  have 
the  right  to  enjoy  the  manner  of  the  cook- 
ing as  well  as  the  matter  of  the  cooked. 

But  as  earnest  joy  in  the  essence  of 
food  fades  into  a  decadent  appreciation 
of  the  form  and  technique  of  dishes,  so 
the  crude  but  stimulating  atmosphere  of 
the  genuine  evaporates,  and  there  comes 
wafting  through  the  dining-room  the  soft 
and  subtle  haze  of  artifice. 

For,  as  the  guests  eat  less  and  taste 
more,  they  remember  more  vividly  where 
they  are.  The  tapestries  emerge  from 
[22] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

the  walls,  the  golden  candelabra  grow 
like  mango  plants,  the  mauve  satin  blazes 
up  through  the  lace  insertions,  each  man's 
neighbors  develop  attributes  of  gratifying 
beauty  or  of  disappointing  ugliness.  Each 
woman's  dress  grows  even  more  enviable 
or  more  pitiable  to  the  eyes  of  other  wom- 
en than  it  was  before  the  beginning  of  din- 
ner interrupted  mutual  observations.  The 
hostess's  new  emerald  pendant  becomes 
a  token  of  marital  devotion  or  a  prov- 
ocation to  absolute  divorce.  The  ugly 
financier  may  drop  a  valuable  hint  on 
market  tendencies  if  the  beautiful  young 
matron  is  sympathetic  enough.  The 
bright  young  Westerner  may  get  the 
entree  to  the  fat  old  lady's  drawing-room 
if  he  is  amusing  enough.  The  rising 
architect  may  get  his  plans  accepted  by 
the  irascible-looking  man  if  he  can  suf- 
ficiently interest  the  latter's  daughter  in 
[23] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

the  aesthetic  possibilities  of  tenement- 
houses.  The  effeminate  youth  may  be 
taken  for  years  older  than  he  is  if  he  can 
talk  cynically  enough  to  the  horsy-looking 
girl.  The  wistful  debutante  may  catch 
the  point  of  the  risque  story,  which  her 
left-hand  neighbor  is  telling  the  mournful 
lady  on  his  farther  side,  if  she  can  listen 
acutely  enough  with  one  ear  while  bend- 
ing the  other  pensively  to  the  remarks 
of  the  eloquent  young  rector  on  her  right. 
Course  follows  course  in  infinite  variety. 
The  dinner  becomes  a  brilliant  culinary 
vaudeville,  where  attraction  on  attraction 
kaleidoscopically  flits  in  swift  review, 
and  manners,  alas!  forbid  a  curtain-call. 
The  servants  cease  from  waiting  on  the 
guests  and  gradually  become  so  many 
prestidigitators,  palming  the  most  promis- 
ing plates  beneath  their  exasperated  vic- 
tims' very  eyes,  proving,  with  tantalizing 
[24] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

success,  that  the  quickness  of  the  hand 
deceives  the  palate. 

The  general  animation  grows  and 
spreads  infectiously.  The  hostess,  feel- 
ing that  from  her  point  of  view  the  dinner 
has  passed  its  danger-point  and  is  on 
the  highroad  to  success,  permits  herself 
to  cease  from  smiling.  Men,  gazing  al- 
ternately into  the  liquid  shallows  of 
sparkling  eyes  and  twinkling  champagne- 
glasses,  feel  their  beings  bursting  with 
noble  thoughts,  novel  theories,  or  brill- 
iant wit,  only  waiting  their  expression  in 
flights  of  an  eloquence  which  has  also 
been  vouchsafed  them.  Women  feel 
themselves  glow  with  a  more  radiant 
loveliness,  tingle  with  a  more  irresistible 
magnetism,  fit  their  gowns  with  a  snug- 
ger perfection — become,  in  short,  more 
wholly  adapted  to  be  the  inspiration  of 
any  man  who  needs  one. 
[25] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

But  thoughts,  theories,  and  wit,  love- 
liness, magnetism,  and  inspiration  are  not 
sufficient  unto  themselves  as  hunger  was. 
If  the  thoughts  would  be  content  with 
comprehension,  the  theories  with  accept- 
ance, the  wit  with  appreciation,  the 
loveliness  with  admiration,  the  magnet- 
ism with  domination,  as  hunger  is  satis- 
fied with  its  appeasement,  the  dinner 
would  still  have  the  beauty  of  sincerity 
even  if  all  these  auto-attributes  were 
merely  imaginary. 

But  they  are  not  thus  satisfied.  For 
behind  the  loveliness  lurk  the  Wall 
Street  tips,  behind  the  theory  lurks  the 
tenement-house,  behind  the  wit  lurks  the 
exclusive  invitation,  behind  the  inspira- 
tion lurks  the  risque  story.  And  behind 
most  of  the  other  attributes  which  grow 
and  flourish  as  the  dinner  advances 
stretch  as  both  their  objects  and  their 
[26] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

instigations  the  threads  of  a  complex 
web  of  artificial  ideals,  artificial  ambitions, 
artificial  apprehensions,  artificial  resent- 
ments, running  all  the  gamut  of  the 
sentiments  of  an  unreal  existence  from 
artificial  triumph  to  artificial  despair. 

As  the  animation  grows,  the  flow  of  talk 
breaks  into  a  cataract  of  conversation. 
This  dashes  itself  from  topic  to  topic,  but 
boils  chiefly  round  the  subject  of  what  was 
done  yesterday,  what  is  planned  for  to- 
morrow, what  common  friends  are  doing 
and  are  saying.  Plays  are  touched  on, 
but  acting  is  ignored;  operas  are  dis- 
cussed, but  only  for  the  personal  per- 
formances of  celebrated  singers,  not  for 
the  music  of  the  operas  themselves. 
Politics  are  discussed  only  in  so  far  as 
they  affect  the  Stock  Exchange  or  the 
race-track.  Politicians  are,  of  course, 
beneath  discussion,  save  in  the  rare  cases 
[27] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY  ON   PARADE 

of  male  members  of  Society  who  have 
answered  the  call  for  gentlemen  to  enter 
politics  for  their  purification,  and  who 
have  invariably  turned  out  the  most 
pointedly  practical  politicians  of  the  lot. 
Painting  is  discussed  only  to  the  extent 
of  the  latest  fashionable  foreign  artist's 
portrait  of  the  latest  fashionable  native 
Society  woman.  Literature  is  less  fort- 
unate, being  considerably  talked  about 
in  the  shape  of  the  latest  fiction;  but  all 
the  talk  confines  itself  to  the  plot  and 
character;  the  style  is  left  severely  to  itself. 
Science  is  discussed  only  as  represented 
by  the  merits  of  competing  types  of  auto- 
mobiles. Statesmanship  figures  in  the 
conversation  only  as  manifested  in  the 
iniquities  of  a  tariff  system  which  makes 
possible  the  New  York  customs  inspection; 
the  most  effective  methods  of  nullifying 
this  system  being  also  touched  on. 
[28] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY  ON   PARADE 

It  would  be  very  unfair,  however,  to 
suppose  that  the  manner  of  all  this  talk 
is  dull  because  the  subjects  are  super- 
ficial. On  the  contrary,  the  spirit  of 
the  conversation  is  one  of  brightness, 
quick-wittedness,  keenness  of  perception, 
shrewdness  of  conclusion.  It  is  almost 
as  if  native  intelligence  wished  to  prove 
(and  came  remarkably  near  proving)  how 
independent  it  could  afford  to  be  of  sub- 
stantial knowledge  and  of  cultivated 
interests. 

There  are,  of  course,  men  and  women 
at  almost  every  large  dinner  who  are 
exceptions  to  these  rules.  Some  dis- 
tinguished bankers  are  interested  and 
expert  in  matters  of  art,  many  prominent 
lawyers  follow  with  keen  interest  the 
developments  of  public  affairs,  some 
women  have  a  deep  love  and  technical 
knowledge  of  music,  and,  more  rarely,  of 
[29] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

painting.  Some  women  are  hard  and 
intelligent  workers  in  the  fields  of  prac- 
tical philanthropy. 

But  any  of  these  who  may  be  at  such 
formal  dinners  are  almost  sure  to  be  few 
and  far  between;  they  are  apt  to  find 
themselves  isolated  from  any  kindred  na- 
tures, flanked  impermeably  by  amiable 
ignorance  and  politely  veiled  indifference. 
Thus  this  little  incompatible  minority 
can  have  no  visible  effect  on  the  pre- 
vailing tone  and  temper  of  the  assembly. 
They  either  mercifully  drug  their  in- 
tellects, and,  by  the  reflex  actions  of  their 
brains,  join  in  the  mental  rompings  which 
surround  them,  or  if,  through  lack  of 
adaptability,  they  cannot  play  such  parts, 
they  sit  like  pedants,  doctrinaires  and 
bores,  steeped  in  the  dulness  almost 
always  displayed  by  depth  when  sur- 
rounded by  superficiality. 
[30] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

Meanwhile  the  dinner  has  run  its 
course,  and,  beneath  the  babel  of  tripping 
tongues,  a  curious  suspense  makes  itself 
felt.  It  is  the  telepathic  manoeuvres  of 
the  hostess  marshalling  her  feminine 
forces  to  rise  and  leave  the  stricken  field 
for  the  tedious  respite  of  the  drawing- 
room.  At  this  moment  it  would  be  of 
melancholy  interest  to  know  how  many 
conversations  cut  short  by  this  exodus 
have  been  of  sufficient  interest  to  cause 
in  the  conversers  any  disappointment  at 
the  interruption,  or  any  intention  to  pur- 
sue the  subject  at  the  next  opportunity. 

The  ladies  glide  into  the  drawing- 
room,  the  men  saunter  into  the  library 
for  their  cigars  and  coffee.  There  the 
host  is  apt  to  be  momentarily  embar- 
rassed by  one  or  more  among  his  guests 
who,  with  misguided  politeness,  do  not 
content  themselves  with  admiring  the 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

masters  on  the  walls,  but  ask  him  their 
names  and  even  the  subjects  of  their 
portraits. 

The  general  conversation,  however, 
quickly  turns  into  a  safer  and  more  con- 
genial channel  and  sweeps  the  inconven- 
ient questioners  along  with  it.  The 
guests  luxuriously  puff  their  admirable 
cigars  whose  smoke  flows  forth  as  smooth 
as  ever  tape  from  ticker,  and  in  the  eddy- 
ing clouds,  with  comfortably  half-shut 
eyes  or  glances  feverishly  bright,  men 
trace  the  shapes  of  the  fluctuating  fortunes 
which  "The  Street"  has  brought  to  them 
that  day. 

The  market  is  the  one  inspiration  that 
can  transmute  general  loquacity  into  gen- 
eral eloquence.  It  is  not  merely  that  the 
future  of  a  stock  is  like  the  future  of  the 
soul,  a  subject  on  which  any  one  man's 
guess  is  as  tenable  as  any  other  man's 
[32] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

theory.  But  practically  every  man  pres- 
ent has  learned  his  stock  quotations  at 
his  mother's  knee.  He  knows  "The 
Street,"  its  traditions,  its  practices,  its 
aspirations,  its  whole  history,  a  great 
deal  better  than  he  knows  the  history  of 
his  country. 

He  could  narrate  the  story  of  Black 
Friday  far  more  minutely  and  infinitely 
more  correctly  than  he  could  the  story 
of  Gettysburg.  He  could  reel  off  the  list 
of  great  Wall  Street  manipulators  from 
the  first  down  to  present  company  far 
more  glibly  than  he  could  the  list  of  the 
Presidents  of  the  United  States.  He  could 
name  the  precise  capitalization  of  any 
great  corporation  a  great  deal  more  read- 
ily than  he  could  the  exact  number  of 
Presidential  electors  of  his  own  State. 

And  he  who  can  do  all  this  is  not  alone 
the  fortunate  one  who  has  been  ordained 
[33] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  financial  orders,  who  is  doing  the  work 
of  the  elect  on  the  floor  of  the  holy  of 
holies,  who  is  preaching  the  prospectus 
among  them  who  sit  in  darkness,  or  per- 
forming modern  miracles  in  the  name 
of  Mammon,  turning  water  into  capital, 
and  making  undigested  securities  fall 
manna-like  from  the  skyey  heights  of 
high  finance. 

But  the  other  men  present,  whose  pro- 
fessions or  business  have  no  connection 
with  the  science  of  exploiting  the  eleva- 
tion or  depression  of  stocks,  engross  them- 
selves in  it  as  an  avocation.  If  fate  for- 
bids them  to  devote  to  it  their  labors  as 
experts  and  specialists  they  can  at  least 
devote  their  leisure  as  gifted  dilettantes, 
amateur  virtuosos,  to  this  most  artful 
of  the  arts.  Thus  it  is  that  when  Wall 
Street  becomes  the  topic  of  conversation 
a  unique  atmosphere  at  once  prevails. 
[34] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

Doctor,  lawyer,  architect,  real-estate  own- 
er, railroad  president,  manufacturer,  and 
mine-owner  mingle  indistinguishably  with 
banker,  broker,  speculator,  promoter.  A 
tone  of  fervor  makes  the  voices  ring. 
Faith  kindles  eyes,  devotion  lights  up 
faces.  The  eloquence  of  earnestness 
breaks  forth,  tenderly  investing  with  the 
radiance  of  romance  the  most  sordid  puts 
and  calls,  and  longs  and  shorts,  and 
margins  and  corners,  and  coverings  and 
takings  of  profits. 

There  are,  of  course,  exceptions  here 
again.  Some  bolder  and  less  conven- 
tional minds,  unswayed  by  the  prevailing 
enthusiasm,  soberly  discuss  the  chances 
of  next  year's  polo  teams,  analyze  the  fine 
points  of  yesterday's  racquet  finals,  or 
argue  with  bewildering  technicality  and 
ignorance  the  rival  merits  of  the  high- 
tension  and  the  low-tension  magneto. 
[35] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

And  in  one  corner  a  slightly  over-stim- 
ulated old  financier  is  telling  two  young 
men  just  out  of  college  how  he  once 
knew  Lincoln  well,  despite  his  wretch- 
ed manners ;  and  they  are  listening 
with  polite  embarrassment  to  this  un- 
sought revelation  of  a  youthful  indiscre- 
tion. 

Of  course,  too,  there  may  be  present  a 
fine  old  judge  who  is  quoting  Horace  to 
a  college  president;  the  weazened  banker 
may  be  maintaining  to  the  florid  young 
broker  that  Sir  Philip  Francis  could  not 
have  written  the  Junius  letters,  the  street- 
railway  president  may  be  discoursing  to 
the  copper-mine  owner  on  the  possibil- 
ities of  the  five-time  in  which  that  move- 
ment in  Tschaikowski's  sixth  symphony 
was  composed;  the  real-estate  owner  may 
be  discussing  with  the  Standard  Oil 
capitalist  the  proofs  that  George  Bancroft 
[36] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

wrote  President  Johnson's  first  message 
to  Congress. 

Any  or  all  of  these  phenomena  might 
conceivably  take  place  in  the  smoke-hazed 
library.  But  they  would  be  exceptional 
and  not  typical  as  is  the  Wall  Street  paean 
which  sounds  its  rich  harmonies  through 
the  handsome  room. 

And  yet  this  zealous  talk  which  rises 
and  falls  like  its  mutable  subject  bears 
its  share  in  the  dinner's  real  success.  For 
it  is  the  sincere  and  unstudied  enjoyment 
of  members  of  a  commercial  Society,  or 
perhaps  rather  of  a  Society  which  has 
become  too  complex  to  adhere  to  crude 
commercialism,  and  therefore  has  become 
addicted  to  the  more  polished  develop- 
ment of  commercialism  concealed  in 
speculation — just  as  Elizabethan  Society, 
which  would  have  scorned  to  sail  the  seas 
in  merchantmen,  delighted  to  find  glory 
[37] 


and  doubloon  in  the  lucrative  depreda- 
tions of  the  gentlemen  adventurers. 

So  this  mercenary  talk  represents  what 
they  have  of  enthusiasm  or  of  aspirations. 
It  is  "a  poor  thing  but'*  their  own.  The 
portion  of  the  evening  devoted  to  it  is 
at  least  clean  of  all  artificiality.  They 
utilize  one  another's  society  to  discuss 
the  matter  which  monopolizes  their  in- 
dividual and  social  interest.  What  more 
legitimate  object  could  a  social  gather- 
ing serve  ? 

But  now  the  host  arises,  and  throwing 
the  stump  of  his  cigar  into  the  blazing 
fire,  starts  resolutely  for  the  door.  A 
suppressed  moan  vibrates  from  those  who 
have  found  such  solace  in  their  first  cigar 
that  they  have  just  begun  a  second  one. 
But  waste  has  ever  been  the  handmaid 
of  chivalry;  so  cherished  Invincibles,  in 
the  full  flush  of  life  and  beauty,  are  con- 
[38] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

signed,  living,  to  the  flames,  or  are  left 
to  meet  a  malodorous  death  upon  the 
scattered  ash-trays,  while  their  execu- 
tioners troop  back  to  join  the  ladies. 

These  have  been  spending  their  time 
with  liqueurs,  coffee,  cigarettes,  and  one 
another — four  stimulants  the  last  three  of 
which  they  are  apt  to  abuse.  They  have 
not  only  talked  dresses  and  babies  while 
scrutinizing  one  another  zealously  for 
anything  new,  but  some  have  also  dis- 
cussed the  domestic  labor  problems  of 
the  day.  Those  of  them  who  have  only 
just  met  converse  with  courteous  cau- 
tion, choosing  as  their  text  such  trivial 
and  non-committal  subjects  as  the  latest 
matinee  to  which  they  have  both  been, 
and  which  ones  of  their  most  creditable 
acquaintances  they  saw  there;  how  de- 
lightful the  dance  was  night  before  last, 
and  how  much  they  are  looking  forward 
[39] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  the  musicale  day  after  to-morrow;  how 
unbecoming  mourning  is  to  one  common 
acquaintance,  and  how  becoming  divorce 
has  been  to  another;  what  an  exquisite 
house  this  is,  and  what  a  delicious  din- 
ner they  have  just  had. 

Those  who  know  one  another  somewhat 
better  say  charming  things  about  one  an- 
other's fascinating  little  children,  and  ask 
one  another  questions  about  the  nation- 
ality of  their  nurses  and  the  nature  of 
their  nourishments. 

Those  whose  acquaintance  is  verging  on 
friendship  talk  clothes:  the  hopeless  fash- 
ion in  hats  just  coming  in,  yet  how,  of 
course,  one  will  have  to  wear  them;  how 
expensive  one's  dressmaker  is  becoming, 
who  was  once  so  reasonable;  what  stun- 
ning models  another  dressmaker  has  who 
has  just  moved  to  Fifth  Avenue.  They 
inform  one  another  of  the  latest  dress- 
[40] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

maker  in  Paris  to  whom  respectable  wom- 
en are  just  beginning  to  go.  They  give 
one  another  addresses  in  Paris  where 
they  say  one  can  get  such  pretty  things 
so  ridiculously  cheap;  but  they  do  not 
give  one  another  the  addresses  where  they 
actually  do  get  such  pretty  things  ridicu- 
lously cheap.  Those  they  keep  sacredly 
to  themselves  for  fear  of  spoiling  the  shop 
with  too  much  custom. 

Those  who  are  intimate  friends,  besides 
talking  children  and  clothes,  seal  the 
bonds  of  this  intimacy  by  plunging  sor- 
rowfully into  the  gloom  of  the  servant 
question.  For  there  is  no  royal  road  to 
peace  with  servants,  nor  is  there  any  pub- 
lic highway,  either.  Millions  and  house- 
keepers may  stave  off  the  doom,  as  mill- 
ions and  doctors  may  stave  off  death ;  but 
the  servant  will  go  and  the  undertaker 
will  come,  alike  inexorable.  So  the  most 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

lavish  hostess  and  the  most  thrifty  house- 
wife among  the  guests  share  the  dreadful 
interest  in  the  kitchen,  the  pantry,  and 
the  servants'  hall;  and  together  those  of 
them  who  are  bosom  friends  pore  over  the 
problems  of  feuds  between  housekeepers 
and  butlers,  of  feuds  between  butlers  and 
parlor  maids,  of  feuds  between  house- 
maids and  ladies'  maids;  of  ruinous  com- 
missions to  chefs  or  cooks;  of  chauffeurs 
who  will  not  eat  with  mere  servants;  of 
nurses  who  ring  the  bell  for  pressing 
needs  five  times  an  hour;  of  decorative 
footmen  ruined  by  drink. 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  tribulations 
which  are  poured  into  the  ears  of  trusted 
friends,  and  which  these  friends  strive  to 
mitigate  with  tender  sympathy  and  adroit 
advice. 

Thus  they  sit  and  chat  in  nervous  silk- 
en grace,  fingering  their  cigarettes,  whose 
[42] 


NEW    YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

incense  puffs  from  curving  lip  or  chiselled 
nostrils  as  delicate  as  any  innuendo. 

To  the  men,  shuffling  in  through  the 
wide  doorway,  they  present  a  formidable 
aspect  and  an  apparently  impregnable 
solidarity.  But  they  quickly  break  up 
with  their  assailants  into  scattered  cou- 
ples and  quartets. 

Now  will  come  the  supreme  test  of  the 
evening's  higher  success.  These  men  and 
women  have  in  the  first  part  of  the  din- 
ner enjoyed  one  another's  society  in  the 
sympathy  of  a  common  appetite  which  pre- 
cluded more  delicate  affinities.  Through- 
out the  rest  of  dinner  their  social  inter- 
course was  continued  with  the  aids  and 
accessories  of  a  rapid  and  varied  sequence 
of  dishes.  After  dinner  the  men  had  their 
cigars  and  Wall  Street,  the  women  their 
cigarettes  and  clothes,  as  habits  to  occupy 
their  attentions.  But  now  they  sit  face 
[43] 


NEW    YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  face,  mind  to  mind,  with  neither  food, 
nor  cooking,  nor  dress,  nor  stocks  to  serve 
as  distractions  and  allies  to  their  conver- 
sation. They  sit  in  the  regions  of  pure 
thought.  Will  their  minds,  groping  tow- 
ard one  another  along  a  tenuous  bridge 
of  words,  meet  and  find  companionship  in 
mutuality  of  mental  interest  ?  Will  their 
tastes  in  common  soar  from  oysters  to 
authors,  from  artichokes  to  architecture, 
from  canvas-backs  to  composers,  from 
pease  to  poetry  ?  Or  will  their  minds,  like 
babies  walking  without  furniture,  toddle 
toward  one  another,  meet  in  dizzy  con- 
tact, and,  having  fallen  painfully  to  earth, 
crawl  sniffling  piteously  back  to  their  re- 
spective nurseries  ? 

No  one  will  ever  know.     For  at  this 
moment  when  Opportunity  stands  smiling 
inscrutably  with  hands  behind  her,  hold- 
ing in  either  palm  success  or  failure,  there 
[44] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

comes  a  strident  twanging,  and  through 
the  door  at  one  end  of  the  drawing-room 
march  negro  minstrels,  fortune-tellers, 
mind-readers,  provided  to  amuse  the 
guests  so  that  they  need  not  face  the  or- 
deal of  interesting  one  another. 

With  muffled  exclamations  of  relief  they 
for  the  most  part  sink  on  rows  of  chairs, 
permitting  their  minds,  agitated  by  the 
prospect  of  aimless  activity,  to  relapse 
into  the  receptive  attitude  of  being  enter- 
tained. 

A  goodly  number,  however  (whose 
brains,  holding  possibilities  of  better 
things,  crave  exercise  without  exertion), 
withdraw  into  a  neighboring  Adam  salon, 
where  small  green  tables  with  four  chairs 
at  each  invite  to  games  of  bridge. 

Seating  themselves,  these  guests  are 
soon  engrossed  in  play,  solemnly  heedless 
of  the  flippant  laughter  and  applause  that 
[45] 


NEW  YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

echo  intermittently  from  the  adjoining 
room. 

And  now  again  the  spirit  of  Sincerity, 
poor  spirit  which  has  been  alternately 
entertained  unawares  and  cruelly  rebuffed 
during  the  evening's  course,  comes  steal- 
ing in  to  lend  her  auspices  alike  to  grand 
slam  and  revoke. 

For  once  again  these  members  of  a  so- 
ciety inherently  commercial,  intrinsically 
intelligent  when  they  can  bring  their  in- 
telligences to  bear  on  practical  and  con- 
crete propositions,  are  in  their  element. 
The  cards  are  in  their  hands  before  their 
eyes,  the  stakes  are  in  their  pockets,  the 
rules  are  in  their  heads.  It  is  a  game  of 
quick  thinking,  not  of  deep  thought.  It 
is  an  appropriate  expression  of  their  in- 
stincts and  their  training.  They  bend 
to  their  bridge  as  earnestly  as  anything 
they  undertake  in  life — an  unworthy  ob- 
[46] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

ject  for  such  earnestness  ?  What  would 
you  ?  It  is  the  best  they  have!  The  ob- 
ject of  a  passion  counts  for  little,  the 
passion  counts  for  everything.  A  great 
love,  whether  lavished  on  a  baby  or  a  doll, 
is  an  ennobling  emotion:  a  vindictive 
hatred,  whether  vented  on  a  husband  or  a 
mosquito,  is  a  harmful  emotion.  So,  then, 
if  bridge  is  played  for  genuine  interest, 
if  bridge  lifts  its  players  out  of  the  phan- 
tasmagoric aims  and  interests  of  their 
Society  into  the  genuine,  the  actual,  the 
human,  even  if  these  virtues  manifest 
themselves  in  commercialism  mitigated 
by  gambling,  nevertheless  is  bridge  an 
influence  to  be  blessed. 

So  the  night  runs  on:  Society  is  held 
together  by  the  centripetal  force  of  clowns, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  competitive  acquisi- 
tiveness, on  the  other.  When,  after  a  few 
hours  more,  both  of  these  have  served 
[47] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

their  purpose  and  preserved  to  the  even- 
ing's entertainment  its  promised  halo  of 
success,  the  guests  file  past  the  hostess, 
appreciating  with  courteous  monotony  the 
hours  of  delight  she  has  vouchsafed  them. 
They  stream  down  the  monumental 
stairs  and  quickly  don  their  coats  and 
wraps.  The  footman  at  the  door  calls 
their  grooms,  their  chauffeurs,  or  their 
coachmen,  and  as  the  vehicles  draw  up 
their  owners  walk  carelessly  out  of  the 
artificial  radiance  of  the  threshold  into 
the  natural  blackness  of  the  night.  But 
some  few  who  have  suffered  from  the 
brilliant  obscurity  within  sigh  their  relief 
at  the  re-enlightenment  that  awaits  them 
in  the  darkness. 


II 

THE   OPERA 

A  the  dinner  sees  Society  at  its  best, 
so  the  opera  shows  it  in  its  most 
unfavorable  aspect.     This  is  be- 
cause its  object  in  attending  the  opera  is 
superlatively  artificial. 

Men  and  women  and  Society  alike  go 
to  dinners  primarily  to  eat  and  drink. 
This  is  natural:  it  is  what  the  original 
dinner  was  prepared  for,  centuries  be- 
fore dinners  were  cooked. 

Women  and  men  and  (to  a  consider- 
able  extent)   Society   alike   go   to   balls 
primarily    to    dance.     This    is    normal: 
it  is  what  the  original  "ball"  was  devised 
*  [49] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

for,  centuries  before  the  most  primitive 
step  was  systematized. 

Men  and  women  go  to  the  opera  to 
enjoy  listening  to  the  music.  This  is 
fitting:  it  is  what  the  original  tom-tom 
was  beaten  for,  centuries  before  one  note 
was  known  from  another.  But  where 
these  men  and  women  enjoy  the  music, 
Society  in  the  main  can  only  endure  it. 
For  as  a  whole  its  musical  sense  is  quite 
atrophied. 

This  being  the  case,  if  a  set  of  men  and 
women  attended  dinners  with  regularity 
and  relish,  having  their  palates  saturated 
with  cocaine,  if  a  hospital  of  paralytics 
maintained  and  patronized  a  series  of 
weekly  hops,  their  actions  would  be  no 
more  abnormal  than  those  of  Society, 
should  it  hear  music  at  the  opera. 

Yet  Society  does  hear  music  at  the 
opera  on  Monday  night  as  methodically 
[50] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

as  it  says  prayers  at  church  on  Sunday 
morning,  as  religiously  as  it  cuts  coupons 
at  the  safe  deposit  on  Tuesday  after- 
noon. 

The  opera  begins,  socially,  at  between 
quarter-past  and  half-past  nine  o'clock. 
At  eight  o'clock  the  ordinary  audience 
has  begun  to  pour  into  the  galleries,  the 
upper  boxes,  and  the  orchestra  seats. 
At  half -past  eight  the  orchestra  has 
started  work  with  an  overture,  and  the 
proletariat  has  proved  what  a  curious 
creature  it  is  by  taking  this  preliminary 
tuning-up  quite  seriously  and  applauding 
it  enthusiastically.  A  moment  later  the 
curtain  has  risen,  and  chorus  and  singers 
have  joined  their  activities  to  that  of  the 
orchestra.  Several  of  the  grand  -  tier 
boxes,  which  are  occupied  by  cultivated 
people  who  are  only  incidentally  mem- 
bers of  "Society,"  now  gradually  fill  with 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

silent  listeners.  After  the  music  has 
dragged  on  for  three-quarters  of  an  hour 
or  so,  the  proper  atmosphere  is  attained, 
the  audience  is  presumably  worked  up 
to  the  proper  pitch  of  anticipation,  the 
mise  en  scene  is  complete. 

There  is  a  stir  and  rustle  behind  the 
velvet  curtain  at  the  back  of  one  of  the 
notable  grand-tier  boxes. 

The  curtain  rattles  aside,  down  to 
the  front  of  the  box  sweeps  a  radiance 
of  satin,  a  scintillation  of  diamonds,  a 
lustre  of  pearls,  a  glow  of  rubies,  a  wan- 
ness of  skin,  a  palpitation  of  fat:  Society 
has  reached  the  opera. 

In  the  front  of  each  box  sit  either  two 
or  three  ladies;  behind  them  are  either 
three  or  four  men — each  box  party  con- 
sists, therefore,  of  from  five  to  seven 
persons.  No  unsophisticated  spectator, 
surveying  such  a  party,  sitting  together 
[52] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

in  ceremonious  ease,  would  guess  what 
a  triumph  of  artifice  each  natural  group- 
ing represents. 

What,  then,  since  love  of  music  is 
negligible,  are  the  rules  of  composition 
which  the  average  hostess  follows  in 
making  up  her  box  party  ?  It  is  im- 
possible to  give  a  satisfactory  answer; 
the  formula  is  a  secret  one.  All  that  we 
definitely  know  is  that  the  hostess  in- 
vites her  guests  because  she  wishes  to 
extend  them  the  compliment  of  sharing 
her  box;  that  her  guests  accept  because 
they  wish  to  enjoy  this  compliment. 
Yet  sharing  her  box  is  a  compliment  only 
because  other  hostesses  have  asked  other 
guests  for  the  same  reason,  and  for  the 
same  reason  other  guests  have  accepted. 
The  box  parties  go  because  the  opera  is 
fashionable;  the  opera  is  fashionable 
because  the  box  parties  go.  Which  is 
[53] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

the  cause,  and  which  the  effect  ?    Which 
came  first,  the  egg  or  the  goose  ? 

But  the  answer  seems  very  much 
clearer  to  a  philosopher  theorizing  ir- 
responsibly up  in  the  "peanut  gallery." 
Why,  if  Society  is  bored  by  the  music,  if 
Society  has  all  the  opportunities  for 
scrutinizing  its  clothes,  its  jewels,  and  its 
members  in  the  closer  proximity  of  its 
dinners  and  its  balls,  why  does  Society 
patronize  the  opera  ?  Why,  replies  our 
philosopher,  because  exclusive  Society, 
to  have  any  reason  for  existence,  must 
exclude.  It  must  prove  that  it  is  select 
by  showing  itself  in  the  midst  of  those 
whom  it  is  rejecting.  If  it  lived  perpet- 
ually in  a  complete  and  splendid  isola- 
tion, the  lower  classes  would  have  no 
ocular  proof  that  they  were  being  ex- 
cluded, while  Society  itself  would  have 
no  collective  sense  of  excluding  them. 
[54] 


NEW  YORK  SOCIETY  ON  PARADE 

The  opera  gives  Society  a  point  of  con- 
tact, and  thus  of  contrast  with  that  horde 
against  whose  incursions  it  is  its  mission 
to  defend  itself.  Society's  reunion  in 
the  visible  midst  of  its  foes  gives  it  an 
esprit  de  corps,  a  solidarity,  which  it  could 
never  secure  or  maintain  by  uninterrupted 
aloofness.  If  it  were  not  for  the  many 
who  are  called,  the  few  who  are  chosen 
would  not  experience  any  peculiar  grati- 
fication. Thus  Society  instinctively  feels 
that  its  presence  at  the  opera  is  indis- 
pensable both  to  tantalize  the  vulgar  into 
more  poignant  envy,  and  to  tone  up  its 
own  morale  for  more  zealous  self-defence 
— or  so  thinks  our  somewhat  socialistic 
friend  m  the  "peanut  gallery." 

Whatever    the    motive    may    be,    the 
hostess  does  graciously  invite  her  guests, 
and  the  guests  do  avidly  accept  her  in- 
vitation.    They  are  generally  asked  to  a 
[55] 


NEW    YORK  SOCIETY  ON  PARADE 

preliminary  dinner,  which  is,  as  a  rule, 
pushed  forward  to  half-past  seven  o'clock 
so  that  they  may  reach  the  opera  before 
the  close  of  the  first  act.  This  is  desirable 
so  that  the  disturbance  of  their  entrance, 
their  removal  of  coats  and  wraps,  their 
respective  allotment  of  seats  by  the  hostess, 
may  take  place  while  the  music  is  still 
going  on,  and  may  not  interrupt  the  so- 
cial exercises  of  the  entr'acte.  There  are, 
however,  a  few  illustrious  exceptions  to 
this  custom,  who,  being  above  such  con- 
vention, do  not  vouchsafe  their  entrance 
until  the  height  of  the  first  entr'acte,  hold- 
ing themselves  in  reserve  so  that  their 
final  advent  may,  in  the  eyes  of  all,  re- 
move suspense  as  to  their  whereabouts 
and  cap  the  climax  of  the  opera's  brill- 
iance. 

At  some  date  between  their  acceptance 
of  the  invitations  and  the  appointed  night 
[56] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

most  of  the  guests  glance  at  the  adver- 
tisements in  their  papers  to  ascertain,  not 
the  composer  who  is  to  be  interpreted,  not 
the  opera  which  is  to  be  rendered,  but 
the  singers  who  are  to  officiate.  If  they 
find  that  these  singers  are  the  most  cele- 
brated artists,  who  command  the  highest 
salaries,  they  feel  gratified.  If  the  singers 
are  ones  who  have  not  yet  earned  such 
reputation  or  extorted  such  salaries,  they 
are  disappointed.  They  are  not  in  the 
least  interested  to  assist  at  the  experi- 
mental debut  of  a  new  artist  (unless  per- 
haps the  singer  has  brought  over  a  Con- 
tinental reputation  for  beauty  and  no- 
toriety for  frailty);  they  are  not  in  the 
least  excited  by  the  possibility  of  hearing 
the  beauties  of  an  unknown  voice  make 
it  famous  in  a  few  hours  of  song.  They 
prefer  song  which  is  so  expensive  that 
it  must  be  the  best.  They  prefer  to  trust 
[57] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  the  impresario's  purse  rather  than  to 
their  own  ears  as  the  criterion  of  art. 

However,  gratified  or  disappointed  on 
this  minor  point,  they  make  their  ap- 
pearance at  their  hostess's  house  at  half- 
past  seven,  and  settle  themselves  to  their 
dinner  with  amiable  appreciation,  oblivi- 
ous to  the  fact  that  as  the  entree  is  served 
the  orchestra  must  be  tuning  up,  as  the 
meat  is  passed  the  overture  must  be 
swelling  through  the  house,  as  the  bird  is 
tasted  the  curtain  must  be  rising  on  the 
first  act. 

The  dinner  being  leisurely  completed, 
the  hostess  remarks  dubiously  to  her 
husband  that  she  supposes  the  men  might 
perhaps  smoke  their  cigars  on  the  way 
to  the  opera.  This  is  probably  more 
from  a  kindly  desire  to  free  the  women 
from  one  another's  society  in  the  drawing- 
room  than  from  any  desire  to  reach  the 
[58] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

opera  earlier,  but  the  men  always  ac- 
quiesce, and  climb  into  one  carriage  or 
automobile  with  their  cigars  and  cigarettes 
while  the  ladies  enjoy  one  another's  com- 
pany in  another  vehicle. 

On  reaching  the  opera  they  walk  up  one 
flight  of  stairs,  to  the  distant  muffled  mur- 
murs of  the  orchestra  and  an  occasional 
high  note  from  one  of  the  singers,  loud 
enough  to  force  its  way  out  to  them. 
These  solitary  and  sudden  notes,  robbed 
of  all  musical  quality  by  the  inaudibility 
of  their  context,  sound  as  if  some  subli- 
mated butcher-shop  within  were  being 
operated  to  slow  music.  But  one  of  the 
guests,  at  some  unusually  penetrating 
scream,  is  sure  to  breathe  "Ah!"  (as  she 
hastens  her  steps  up  the  stairs);  "Ah!" 
in  tones  of  tender  and  preposterous  ap- 
preciation. Why  she  does  it  she  could  not 
herself  explain,  for  she  has  not  the  least 
[59] 


NEW   YOR.K  SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

intention  of  listening  to  the  music  when 
she  reaches  the  box.  It  is  probably  done 
from  the  same  instinct  that  would  make 
her  honestly  declare,  if  questioned,  that 
she  was  devoted  to  music  or  to  children, 
although  she  might  not  know  a  fugue 
in  one  from  a  whooping-cough  out  of  the 
other.  A  curious  traditional  attribute  of 
her  sex,  this  devotion  to  music  and  chil- 
dren, which  she  still  feels  it  seemly  to 
subscribe  to  in  theory. 

When  the  party  reaches  the  top  of  the 
stairs  a  liveried  usher  shows  them  to  the 
door  of  their  box,  which  he  unlocks  and 
opens  for  them.  On  this  door  is  a  plate 
bearing  the  name  of  their  host  if  he  is 
enviable  enough  to  own  the  box,  or  of 
some  one  else  if  he  is  merely  rich  enough 
to  rent  it.  There  is  a  certain  subtle  dif- 
ference of  emotion,  which  almost  every 
opera  guest  has  experienced,  between 
[60] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

sitting  in  an  owned  and  in  a  hired  box. 
In  the  rented  box  the  guest  feels  the 
privilege  of  presence,  but  in  the  owned 
box  she  feels  the  prestige  of  possession, 
feels  with  a  twinge  of  veneration  that  her 
hosts  actually  own  the  number  of  square 
feet  of  music  that  enter  their  box,  actually 
own  that  proportion  of  tenor,  soprano, 
and  baritone;  of  brass  and  strings  and 
wood-wind;  of  the  passion  and  beauty 
and  boredom  of  the  musical  opera;  of  the 
fashion  and  brilliance  and  fascination  of 
the  social  opera — it  is  the  difference  be- 
tween having  the  admirable  portrait  of  an 
unknown  man  shown  by  a  public  guide, 
on  a  museum  wall,  and  having  an  old 
master's  portrait  of  an  illustrious  an- 
cestor pointed  out  by  his  distinguished 
descendant,  on  his  dining-room  wall. 
It  is  the  difference  between  the  expensive 
bottle  of  wine  your  host  buys  for  you  at  a 
[61] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

restaurant  and  the  precious  bottle  which 
he  brings  up  for  you  from  his  family 
cellar.  It  is  all  the  added  value  of  tradi- 
tion and  association  that  casts  its  glamour 
of  mellow  vanity  on  the  box  party  whose 
host's  name  is  on  the  box  door. 

The  usher  having  unlocked  the  door, 
a  neat  maid  hastens  up  to  help  the  ladies 
off  with  their  opera  cloaks  and  their  fur 
overshoes.  The  little  room  at  the  back 
of  the  box  becomes  for  a  few  moments  a 
scene  of  bewildering  confusion  before 
Nature  is  extricated  from  her  shrouds,  a 
powdered  medley  of  writhing  arms,  con- 
torted backs,  twisted  necks,  and  heaving 
bosoms.  One  or  two  of  the  men  general- 
ly add  to  the  confusion  by  helping  the 
ladies  off  with  their  things,  while  the  other 
men  stand  in  the  hall  pulling  on  and 
buttoning  their  white  gloves,  until  finally 
all  the  superfluous  clothes  are  hanging 
[62] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

on  the  walls  and  lying  across  the  sofa  and 
the  chairs.  Then  the  men  follow  into 
the  small  room  and  dispose  of  their  own 
hats  and  coats  in  any  odd  corners  of  the 
floor  that  may  remain  available. 

It  is  then  that  the  hostess,  pulling  aside 
the  curtain  with  a  rattle  which  the  music 
almost  drowns,  sweeps  down  to  the  front 
of  the  box  and  indicates  to  the  other 
ladies  which  of  the  front  seats  they  are  to 
adorn.  The  men  are  ranged  behind  the 
women  by  chance,  by  choice,  or  by  ad- 
versity, the  whole  party  settles  itself  in 
comfort  with  a  few  delicate  wriggles, 
and,  raising  its  battery  of  opera-glasses, 
throws  itself  into  the  duty  and  the  pleas- 
ure of  the  occasion.  The  other  boxes 
are  by  this  time  filled  or  filling.  The 
"Horse-shoe"  presents  engrossing  inter- 
est; it  is  a  kaleidoscopic  combination  of 
clothes  and  jewels  and  women  and  men, 
[63] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  be  analyzed  and  criticised  to  the 
spleen's  content.  Many  boxes  are  of 
course  comparatively  uninteresting.  The 
women  in  them  have  to  be  dismissed  as 
looking  worse,  or,  occasionally,  better 
than  usual.  But,  then,  in  other  boxes 
may  be  discovered  the  pathos  of  a  woman 
wearing  the  very  same  dress  she  wore  to 
the  opera  a  week  ago;  the  problem  of  a 
woman  of  moderate  means  wearing  a 
string  of  pearls  which  must  be  either 
adulterated  or  adulterous;  the  romance 
of  a  young  couple  who  were  blessed  with 
their  first  baby  only  a  fortnight  before; 
the  tragedy  of  the  noble  earl,  imported 
by  one  fond  mother,  sitting  in  another 
mother's  box;  the  satire  of  the  social 
climber  who  has  at  last  mysteriously 
managed  to  get  herself  into  the  Society 
leader's  box;  the  comedy  of  the  senti- 
mental -  looking  couple  just  back  from 
[64] 


their  wedding  trip,  with  the  bride's  lately 
divorced  husband  sitting  at  her  elbow 
in  the  next  box.  These  are  only  the 
obvious  features  that  the  first  sweep  of 
the  opera-glasses  brings  into  view.  Imag- 
ine, then,  what  interesting  revelations, 
what  tantalizing  mysteries,  what  thrilling 
certainties,  will  yield  themselves  to  the 
patient  and  minute  investigation  which 
is  to  follow. 

Our  hostess,  after  the  first  preliminary 
sweep  of  her  opera-glasses,  postpones  the 
more  delicate  scrutiny  and  leans  back 
to  enjoy  a  moment's  passive  satisfaction. 
For  she  has  already  seen  enough  to  know 
that  her  party,  in  membership  and  adorn- 
ment, has  no  superior  among  the  other 
boxes.  Has  she  not,  sitting  next  her,  the 
beautiful  Englishwoman  whose  ambitious 
indiscretions  are  admitted  to  be  regal  in 
their  field  of  operation,  who  is  spending  a 
[65] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

few  weeks  in  New  York,  and  who  is  most 
fastidious  in  her  acceptance  of  invitations  ? 
Has  she  not  placed  next  to  this  quasi- 
royal  guest  her  own  lovely  stepdaughter 
by  her  husband's  divorced  wife,  an  act 
of  maternal  solicitude  which  she  could 
not  have  improved  on  if  the  girl  had  been 
her  own  daughter  by  her  divorced  hus- 
band ?  Is  not  her  English  guest  a  daz- 
zling marvel  in  dress  and  jewels  ?  Is  not 
her  lovely  stepdaughter  a  shimmering 
triumph  of  extravagant  simplicity — her 
dress,  her  dog-collar,  her  demeanor  all 
virginally  quiet,  obviously  most  expen- 
sive ?  Is  not  her  own  appearance  the 
most  incomparably  splendid  which  taste 
and  money  can  provide  ? 

She  is  proud  of  the  appearance  of  her 

box,  she  is  delighted  at  the  appearance  of 

the  other  women.     For  the   opera   has 

lifted  her  to  such  dizzy  heights  of  arti- 

[661 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

ficiality  that  she  has  left  the  woman  far 
below  and  is  now  but  the  disembodied 
hostess.  She  does  not  resent  the  splendor 
of  the  women  next  her,  she  does  not  wish 
to  eclipse  them,  she  does  not  fear  their 
eclipsing  her,  she  is  perfectly  willing,  if 
need  be,  to  shine  in  reflected  jewels. 
All  for  which  she  yearns  is  that  they  will 
collaborate  with  her  to  make  her  box  the 
most  brilliant  at  the  opera. 

As  for  the  men:  there  is  the  husband 
of  the  Englishwoman  who  has  been 
accepted  with  his  wife,  although  society 
has  been  rather  shocked  at  the  open  way, 
under  the  circumstances,  in  which  they 
travel  together.  Next  him  sits  the  most 
eligible  young  man  in  New  York,  of  very 
good  family,  very  rich,  very  well  behaved; 
who  was  at  first  considered  stupid,  but 
who  has  vindicated  himself  by  learning 
to  drive  a  four  in  masterly  fashion.  He 
[67] 


NEW    YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

is  afraid  that  he  will  be  married  by  her 
stepdaughter,  but  has  accepted  her  in- 
vitation, notwithstanding.  Behind  the 
Englishman  sits  the  clever  architect  who 
writes  such  cynical  articles  about  society, 
and  goes  about  only  in  its  most  exclusive 
set.  He  makes  short  remarks  which  she 
does  not  understand,  but  which,  she  is 
informed,  are  called  epigrams  and  are 
intellectual.  At  any  rate,  his  presence 
shows  that  she  can  command  literary  as 
well  as  social  eminence.  Next  to  him, 
in  the  remote  back  of  the  box,  sits  her 
husband,  smiling  benignly,  she  feels  sure. 
He  always  smiles  like  that  when  he  is 
thinking  of  a  new  railroad  he  plans  to 
add  to  his  collection.  She  wishes  he 
would  not  think  of  business  at  the  opera. 
She  has  often  told  him  what  a  Philistine 
proceeding  it  is.  But,  after  all,  he  is  the 
most  prominent  figure  in  the  financial 
[68] 


THE      "HORSE-SHOE"      AT      ITS      BEST 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

world  of  his  day,  so  his  presence  in  her 
party  rounds  out  its  eclectic  selectness. 
At  this  moment  the  box  party  becomes 
vaguely  aware  that  something  has  just 
happened,  and,  on  shaking  itself  free  from 
its  reveries  and  descending  to  material 
things,  it  finds  that  the  music  has  sud- 
denly stopped,  that  the  curtain  has  just 
fallen  on  the  first  act,  and  that  a  large 
portion  of  the  audience  are  on  their  feet 
applauding  with  violence. 

The  light  blazes  more  brilliantly 
throughout  the  auditorium,  no  longer 
subordinated  to  the  footlights  and  the 
calcium;  the  ordinary  audience  breaks 
from  silence  into  conversation,  and  society 
in  the  boxes  continues  its  conversations 
in  freer  tones,  no  longer  trammelled  by 
the  orchestra  and  singers. 

The  "Horse-shoe"  is  now  seen  at  what 
it  would  consider  its  best.  A  curious 
[69] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

"best"  it  is.  The  stark  illumination  un- 
doubtedly brings  out  every  shade  of  silk, 
satin,  and  velvet.  It  beats  on  every 
facet  of  every  jewel  to  the  most  perfect 
advantage.  Perhaps  it  beguiles  the  flow- 
ers dying  on  the  women's  breasts  into 
feeling  themselves  back  beneath  the  sun- 
rise. But  when  it  touches  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  the  women  themselves  it  changes 
its  tactics.  It  used  to  suck  all  the  color 
from  their  faces  and  spread  over  them 
instead  a  harsh  and  haggard  tinge.  It 
used  to  pounce  on  foibles  with  the  in- 
genuity of  a  caricaturist  and  nurse  them 
into  blatent  blemishes,  deepening  the 
slight  shadows  of  thinness  into  the  dark 
hollows  of  emaciation,  strengthening  the 
high-lights  of  plumpness  into  the  swollen 
shininess  of  obesity. 

This  mocking  mischief  of  the  chiaros- 
curo has  been  corrected  by  a  chivalrous 
[70] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

management,  but  the  remedy  has  grave 
defects  of  its  own.  For  the  light,  bullied 
out  of  its  former  vagaries,  now  casts  itself 
on  its  victims  in  a  non-committal,  stolid 
glare  which  reduces  them  one  and  all  to 
utter  uniformity  and  indescribable  in- 
anity. There  are  no  laughably  fat  wom- 
en, no  pitifully  thin  women,  no  sheepish 
women,  no  waspish  women,  no  bovine 
women,  no  feline  women — no  women. 
For  the  light  refuses  to  accord  to  beauty 
the  truth  that  it  withholds  from  ugliness. 
If  it  is  forced  to  ignore  human  imper- 
fections it  will  assuredly  not  emphasize 
feminine  perfections.  If  it  is  not  per- 
mitted to  indulge  itself  in  personalities, 
neither  will  it  indulge  its  victims  in  in- 
dividualities. So  there  they  sit,  side  by 
side,  in  their  scores  and  in  their  hundreds, 
women  in  reality  beautiful  or  ugly,  clever 
or  stupid,  refined  or  coarse-grained,  pure 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

or  sensual,  modest  or  bold,  sweet  or  hard : 
to  be  loved,  to  be  won,  to  be  cherished, 
to  be  slaved  for;  to  be  gulled,  to  be  be- 
trayed, to  be  abused,  to  be  forgotten — 
enough  women  in  potentiality  to  redeem 
or  to  annihilate  the  world. 

There  they  sit,  side  by  side,  in  their 
scores  and  in  their  hundreds,  women  who 
are  in  semblance  wax  dolls  one  and  all, 
mere  supports  for  their  dresses,  mere 
backgrounds  for  their  jewels,  mere  manni- 
kins  worked  by  a  cynical  ventriloquist  to 
grin  and  gesture  with  automatic  anima- 
tion, to  pose  and  preen  with  pomp  and 
dignity;  all  cast  in  one  mould,  and,  God 
help  us,  the  mould  not  cracked  in  the 
casting. 

And  the  pitiful  part  of  it  is  that  the 

light  is  all  the  while  rendering  a  sardonic 

obedience    to    their    desires,    fashioning 

itself  into  a  sneering  angel  of  truth.     It 

[72] 


A      YOUNG      MAN      OP      EXCELLENT      FAMILY      BUT 
NO      FORTUNE,    AND  — OF      NO      PROSPECTS 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

emphasizes  what  they  cherish,  it  discounts 
what  they  neglect.  If  it  caresses  tender- 
ly every  fold  of  drapery,  every  subtlest 
tint  and  texture  of  moire  and  brocade,  if 
it  dallies  passionately  with  every  depth 
and  shallow  of  every  gem,  if  it  obliterates 
every  reflection  of  mind  and  heart,  every 
expression  of  soul  and  understanding, 
what  is  it  doing  that  they  are  not  doing  ? 
If  they  prefer  to  be  admired  for  their 
clothes  rather  than  for  their  qualities,  for 
their  mineral  appendages  rather  than  for 
their  moral  attributes,  is  the  light  not 
ministering  to  their  predilections  ? 

Hardly  has  the  curtain  fallen  on  the 
first  act  when  the  door  of  our  opera 
party's  box  clicks  open  and  a  young  man 
enters  and  pays  his  respects  to  the  ladies. 
He  is  a  young  man  of  excellent  family  but 
of  no  fortune,  and  (as  he  has  wilfully 
become  a  dramatic  critic  instead  of  a 
[73] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

broker's  clerk)  of  no  prospects.  He  is 
deeply  in  love  with  the  hostess's  step- 
daughter; she  finds  him  a  curious  and 
alluring  novelty,  for  he  has  a  profusion  of 
ideas,  which  he  exposes  quite  indecently 
to  the  point  of  view  of  one  who,  like  her, 
has  been  educated  to  believe  that  the 
larger  portions  of  the  brain  as  well  as  of 
the  body  are  not  supposed  to  exist  in 
polite  society.  At  his  entrance  the  most 
eligible  young  man  in  New  York  and  the 
Englishman  take  the  opportunity  of  de- 
parting to  pay  some  visits  of  their  own. 
The  hostess  considers  the  new-comer  to  be 
a  young  man  of  cleverness,  and  therefore 
presumably  of  bad  form.  She  regards 
him  with  deep  suspicion,  and  therefore 
engages  him  in  animated  conversation,  to 
his  distress  and  her  stepdaughter's  an- 
noyance. She  knows  he  is  the  type  of 
person  who  is  probably  interested  in  the 
[74] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

goings-on  beyond  the  footlights,  and  so 
tactfully  turns  the  conversation  to  operatic 
art  by  asking  him  whether  he  does  not 
think  that  the  soprano  has  kept  her 
figure  wonderfully  for  her  age,  while  the 
contralto  must  have  gained  fully  twenty 
pounds  since  last  season,  and  the  tenor 
does  look  absurd  without  his  own  mus- 
tache. 

The  door  clicks  open  again  and  a 
middle-aged  man  mouses  in  to  speak  to 
the  English  celebrity.  He  has  been  an 
intimate  friend  of  hers  in  London  in  the 
days  of  her  virtuous  obscurity,  and  won- 
ders whether  she  will  remember  him 
again.  As  he  seats  himself  the  host- 
ess's husband  disappears.  The  English- 
woman asks  her  old  friend  if  he  does  not 
consider  it  shocking  that  .such  an  opera 
as  the  one  given  last  Monday  should  be 
permitted  on  the  stage  in  New  York  to 
[75] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

corrupt  public  morals — she  is  happy  to 
say  that  it  has  never  got  by  the  censor  in 
England. 

The  door  swings  open  again,  and  in 
comes  an  elderly  young  man  of  twenty- 
five  or  thereabouts.  He  considers  him- 
self under  social  obligations  to  the  hostess 
for  past  hospitalities  and  future  enter- 
tainments, and  is  expected  to  attach  him- 
self in  public  to  his  fashionable  patroness, 
just  as  the  plebeian  clients  of  Augustan 
Rome  found  it  incumbent  to  follow  in  the 
train  of  their  aristocratic  patrons  in  their 
walks  through  streets  and  forum.  He 
suavely  but  surely  usurps  the  conversa- 
tion with  the  hostess,  leaving  the  dramatic 
critic  the  pleasant  task  of  stepping  into 
the  shoes  of  the  departing  architect  by 
entertaining  the  stepdaughter.  This  is 
precisely  what  the  hostess  wishes  to 
avoid,  but  with  well-trained  self-control 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

she  conceals  her  vexation  by  remarking 
to  the  elderly  young  man  that  she  sees  his 
grandmother  is  wearing  her  Pearls  to- 
night. He  professes  surprise,  as  he  had 
understood  the  Pearls  were  being  cleaned 
at  the  jeweller's,  and  had  therefore  taken 
for  granted  that  she  would  wear  the 
Sapphires.  They  then  remark  with  in- 
terest which  of  their  jewels  several  other 
women  are  wearing.  For  hostesses  and 
their  social  clients  (at  the  opera,  at  least) 
are  very  much  more  familiar  with  their 
friends'  gems  than  with  their  children, 
and  take  a  deep  and  affectionate  interest 
in  their  families  of  precious  stones,  from 
their  first-born  necklace  to  the  new-born 
stomacher  which  is  the  joy  and  consola- 
tion of  their  age. 

And  now,  just  at  the  moment  when, 
all  through  the  glittering  "Horse-shoe," 
young  ineligibles  are  creeping  closest  to 
[77] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

their  ladies'  hearts,  old  friends  are  becom- 
ing most  dubious  as  to  one  another's  loss 
of  reputations,  young  protegees  are  shed- 
ding most  lustre  upon  their  social  suze- 
rains— just  as  the  opera  is  reaching  its 
climacteric — the  lights  go  out,  the  or- 
chestra begins  to  bang  and  clash,  and 
Society  has  to  plunge  into  the  dismal 
anticlimax  of  the  music  and  song,  with 
nothing  to  mitigate  it  but  patiently  sub- 
dued conversation.  After  the  first  few 
bars  of  music  the  male  inhabitants  of  the 
box  come  slinking  in,  like  beasts  of  prey 
returning  to  their  lair,  and  the  visitors 
have  to  return  to  their  own  respective 
parties. 

The  second  act  necessitating,  for  some 
absurd  theatrical  reason,  a  darkened 
auditorium,  the  well-bred  patience  of 
Society  deserves  a  world  of  credit.  Do 
they  pay  very  large  prices  for  their  boxes, 
[78] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

and  expend  much  time  and  trouble  on 
their  personal  appearance,  merely  to 
crouch  whispering  in  the  dark,  like  silly 
children  at  a  magic-lantern  show?  And 
yet  not  a  moan  of  protest,  scarcely  a  sigh 
of  complaint,  escapes  them.  They  sit 
murmuring  affably  in  one  another's  ears, 
with  their  eyes  fixed  vacantly  on  the  rel- 
ative brightness  of  the  stage,  paying  a 
sort  of  automatic  heed  to  the  gesticulations 
and  vociferations  of  the  excited  little  men 
and  women  down  beyond  the  footlights, 
occasionally  remarking  with  gentle  pity 
the  absurd  contortions  of  the  poor  crazed 
conductor.  One  of  the  women  seems 
to  be  waving  a  veil  from  the  steps  of  an 
old  castle;  two  men  come  into  the  dim 
garden  below;  one  woman  and  one  man 
go  away;  the  other  woman  and  the  other 
man  begin  singing  to  each  other,  sitting 
on  a  bench  in  the  dim  garden,  locked  in 
[79] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

each  other's  arms.  The  woman  is  the 
soprano  who  has  kept  her  figure  so  re- 
markably; she  has  one  of  the  very  largest 
salaries  in  the  world,  and  necessarily  one 
of  the  very  finest  voices.  The  man  is  the 
tenor  who  has  shaved  off  his  mustache. 
His  voice  and  his  salary  are  as  superla- 
tive as  hers.  As  they  go  on  singing  a 
good  many  of  the  boxes  become  strangely 
hushed,  many  of  the  vacant  gazes  grow 
attentive.  For  this  is  wonderful  singing, 
and,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  a  large  pro- 
portion of  Society  can  appreciate  wonder- 
ful singing.  Through  attending  the  opera 
at  least  once  a  week  steadily,  opera  season 
after  opera  season,  through  being  com- 
pelled to  hear,  at  its  musicales,  nothing 
but  the  picked  voices  of  the  world,  Society 
has  undergone  a  subconscious  education, 
has  suffered  cultivation  despite  itself. 
It  still  knows  nothing  whatsoever  of 
[80] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

orchestral  music,  it  still  cares  nothing 
whatsoever  for  vocal  music  as  music, 
for  it  still  feels  nothing  whatsoever  of  the 
beauties  of  a  splendid  voice.  But  it  does 
find  an  intelligent  satisfaction  in  hearing 
a  voice  as  competently  employed  as  pos- 
sible. It  knows  and  disapproves  imme- 
diately when  a  note  is  flat  or  sharp,  or 
veiled  or  has  a  tremolo,  not  because  it 
feels  the  slightest  pain  at  the  ugliness  of 
the  note,  but  because  it  knows  that  the 
voice  is  not  doing  its  work  perfectly,  and 
it  wants  its  voices,  like  its  automobiles 
or  its  stock-tickers,  to  run  accurately  and 
without  hitch. 

So  most  of  the  boxes  listen  attentively 
to  the  singing,  and,  though  none  of  its 
beauty  penetrates  to  their  emotions,  yet 
somehow,  taken  with  the  acting  and  the 
setting,  they  realize  that  the  most  passion- 
ate of  love-scenes  is  being  sung  and  suf- 
[81] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

fered  in  their  presence.  And  as  it  is  the 
fat  and  sodden  men  who  find  the  keenest 
enjoyment  in  watching  the  physical  en- 
durance of  a  prize-fight,  so  these  flat- 
chested  girls  and  anaemic  women  find 
a  pleasurable  filip  to  their  imaginations  in 
the  molten  passion  of  this  love  duet. 

But  the  lovers  are  interrupted  by  a 
reproachful  basso  with  an  interminable 
song,  and  the  boxes  return  to  their  mut- 
tered conversations.  The  auditorium  be- 
comes somewhat  lighter,  and  Society  for- 
gets the  stage  and  the  throbbing  music, 
and  engages  itself  once  more  in  inspecting 
and  in  being  inspected. 

Now  can  be  witnessed  to  the  best  ad- 
vantage the  functioning  of  a  curious  sixth 
sense  possessed  by  Society,  one  all  its 
own — the  sense  of  exhibition.  Although 
this  sense  cannot  be  analyzed,  it  is  as  in- 
dubitable as  that  of  direction  in  carrier- 
[82] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

pigeons.  If  Society  at  the  opera  were 
blindfolded  so  that  it  could  see  no  ad- 
miring glances,  had  its  ears  stuffed  so 
that  it  could  hear  no  adulatory  applause, 
had  its  nostrils  stopped  so  that  it  could 
smell  no  incense,  and  had  its  powers 
of  touch  and  taste  for  the  time  being  sus- 
pended also,  to  be  on  the  safe  side,  never- 
theless it  would  still  sense  the  presence 
of  observation,  and  would  preen  itself 
as  spontaneously  as  it  would  make  a 
wry  face  at  a  bitter  taste,  or  flinch  at  a 
violent  sound,  or  start  at  a  pin-prick. 

Amid  the  pleasures  and  the  profits  of 
this  mutual  observation  the  rest  of  the 
act  elapses,  unnoticed  and  unresented. 
The  curtain  falls  upon  the  stage  and  rises 
upon  the  second  entr'acte  amid  the  thun- 
derous applause  of  a  seemingly  hysterical 
populace.  The  hostess,  her  stepdaughter, 
and  her  English  guest  have  now  appar- 
[83] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

ently  observed  all  there  is  worth  notice  in 
the  other  boxes  and  know  all  that  should 
be  known  of  their  occupants.  The  desire 
to  see  has  been  satiated,  the  desire  to  be 
seen  alone  survives.  But,  as  all  the  other 
ladies  in  all  the  other  boxes  share  these 
sentiments  with  one  accord,  the  business 
of  the  evening  threatens  to  come  to  a 
standstill.  Now  it  is  that  the  eyes  of  the 
party  wander  listlessly  from  the  other 
boxes  down  to  the  orchestra  seats.  There 
they  note  what  will  always  be  a  puzzle  to 
such  eyes.  For  scattered  among  these 
seats  are  the  familiar  faces  of  many  ac- 
quaintances and  friends,  all  fellow-mem- 
bers of  Society.  Some  of  them  could 
easily  afford  opera  boxes  of  their  own, 
many  of  them  could  have  accepted  in- 
vitations to  other  people's  opera  boxes. 
Yet  they  prefer  to  sit  huddled  in  pro- 
miscuous rows,  and  seem  all  the  while 
[84] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

to  be  instinct  with  enjoyment.  These 
are  the  men  and  women  of  Society  who 
come  to-night  from  sheer  desire  for 
music,  to  let  the  world  in  which  they 
work  and  worry  drift  from  their  sight, 
and  for  a  little  while  live  in  that  land  of 
visions  to  which  the  thrill  and  thraldom' 
of  the  music  alone  can  lift  them.  They 
are  Society's  minority  of  sane,  straight 
men  and  women,  too  few  to  stamp  their 
soundness  on  its  spuriousness,  but  none 
the  less  a  vivifying  few  who  prove  in 
Society's  behalf  that  breeding  is  com- 
patible with  brains,  polite  associations 
with  intelligent  interests,  and  all  the  pomp 
of  polished  worldliness  with  the  homely 
virtues  of  decent  citizens. 

As  the  second  entr'acte  ends  and  the 

curtain  rises  on  the  last  act  our  party 

is  by  now  reduced  to  straits  of  monotony. 

They  are  tired  of  looking  at  their  friends, 

[85] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

which  is  regrettable.  Their  friends  are 
tired  of  looking  at  them,  which  is  in- 
tolerable. They  are  tired  of  talking  to 
one  another,  which  is  natural.  They 
have  no  resource  left  but  self-com- 
munion, and  that  is  tantamount  to  ex- 
communication. At  length,  as  a  last 
desperate  resort,  the  hostess  fixes  her 
veiled  attention  on  the  box  next  her  on 
the  left.  Its  owner  has  been  driven, 
among  the  other  privations  of  a  panic, 
to  rent  this  box  for  alternate  Monday 
nights  to  a  family  of  rank  outsiders,  a 
piece  of  treachery  to  his  caste  which 
even  his  dilemma  leaves  it  difficult  to 
forgive.  In  the  box  sit  these  people 
whom  our  hostess  does  not  know.  True, 
her  husband  is  acquainted  with  the  man 
during  business  hours  down  in  Wall 
Street;  true,  she  herself  has  met  the 
woman,  his  wife,  at  a  benefit  which  she 
[86] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

was  once  misguided  enough  to  attend  as 
patroness;  true,  her  stepdaughter  has 
been  at  school  with  the  daughter  of  this 
couple.  But  she  assuredly  does  not 
know  them,  and  between  the  inmates  of 
the  two  boxes,  sitting  a  few  inches  apart, 
rises  a  film  of  ice,  transparent  but  frigidly 
impassable.  Now,  through  this  film  our 
hostess  warily  watches  her  neighbors. 
She  feels  astonished  resentment  at  the 
way  in  which  these  persons  manage  to  ape 
the  appearance  and  the  manners  of  their 
betters.  The  woman's  dress  is  perfec- 
tion, not  high  enough  or  quiet  enough  to 
seem  bourgeois,  not  too  low  or  too  vulgar 
to  be  fashionable.  Her  jewels,  too,  sound 
just  the  proper  note  of  ostentation.  Her 
face  strikes  a  nice  balance  between  arti- 
fice and  nature.  Her  voice  is  perhaps 
too  well  modulated  to  be  in  the  best  of 
form,  but  she  undoubtedly  has  the  ef- 
[87] 


NEW    YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

frontery  to  wear  an  air  of  natural  dis- 
tinction. Her  husband  is  a  fine-looking, 
well-mannered  man,  her  daughter  a  little 
thing  apparently  of  grace  and  of  refine- 
ment. Our  hostess  heaves  a  sigh.  She 
realizes  that  these  strangers  are  her 
subtlest  foes,  who  weaken  Society  by 
sapping  the  rigor  of  its  exclusiveness. 
To-day  they  are  not  known,  to-morrow 
they  are  already  within  the  gates,  the 
next  day  who  knows  but  they  may  be  the 
self-appointed  guardians  of  Society's  most 
sacred  shrines.  She  understands  that  a 
little  judiciously  selected  new  blood  adds 
strength  to  her  order,  but  let  in  too  much 
new  blood,  destroy  the  nice  balance  be- 
tween the  multitude  of  eager  aspirants 
to  her  rank  and  the  few  selected  for  the 
privilege  of  promotion,  and  dimly  she 
feels  that  no  one  will  prize  what  every  one 
can  have,  and  that  Society  will  go  down 
[88] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  extinction  in  a  convulsion  of  exploded 
self-esteem. 

Finally  as  even  such  forebodings  fail 
any  longer  to  hold  her  attention,  the  music 
forces  itself  more  and  more  remorselessly 
upon  her  and  her  companions.  They 
find  their  ears  being  morbidly  drawn  to  it, 
just  as  their  eyes  might  be  drawn  again 
and  again  to  some  horrible  sight  they  did 
not  wish  to  see.  They  cannot  escape 
the  delirious  ravings  of  the  wounded  hero. 
They  do  not  know  that  his  yearnings  are 
for  his  mistress's  ship;  they  do  know  that 
theirs  are  for  their  hostess's  automobile. 
Were  they  but  gifted  with  his  vocal 
chords,  they  might  sing  their  impatience 
as  earnestly  as  he.  They  have  no  faithful 
henchman  to  soothe  their  fevered  brows 
and  comfort  their  distress.  They  cannot 
even,  as  a  last  resort,  end  the  suspense  by 
tearing  bandages  from  bleeding  wounds. 
[89] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

They  must  sit,  and  sit,  in  stoic  resignation. 
For  if  they  left  as  yet  they  would  arrive 
too  early  at  the  dance  for  which  they  are 
bound.  And  so,  their  bracelets  growing 
into  manacles,  their  necklaces  into  cold, 
heavy  fetters,  their  rings  into  hard  thumb- 
screws, their  tiaras  into  slow-shrinking 
iron  torture-caps,  they  gallantly  set  their 
teeth,  and,  with  never  a  writhe  or  whimper 
of  their  suffering,  sit  on  in  their  vast  and 
brilliant  torture-chamber,  heroic  slaves 
to  duty  and  decorum. 

But  now  at  last  after  a  murmured  con- 
sultation the  hostess  rises,  the  rest  follow- 
ing her  example.  As  they  stand  there  for 
a  moment  their  weary  eyes  wander  for  the 
glad  last  rime  to  the  stage  from  which  they 
are  escaping.  There  the  hero  has  ap- 
parently just  died,  and  the  heroine, 
kneeling  beside  his  body,  is  just  beginning 
to  sing. 

[90] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

The  curtain  of  the  box  rattles  back, 
and  the  party,  chatting  briskly,  passes 
out  into  the  little  room  behind.  They 
agree  that  they  are  leaving  at  exactly  the 
right  moment.  By  taking  their  time  in 
getting  into  their  wraps,  and  counting  on 
the  usual  delay  in  getting  their  auto- 
mobile, they  will  reach  the  dance  at  just 
about  the  proper  time. 

Meanwhile  many  other  curtains  rattle 
open,  letting  rays  of  light  flash  merrily 
across  the  auditorium  as  the  box  parties 
pass  cheerily  out  on  their  way  to  the 
dance  or  to  their  homes.  The  boxes  of 
the  "  Horse-shoe "  become,  with  some 
exceptions,  suddenly  deserted. 

The  opera  is  over.  All  that  is  left  is 
the  ordinary  audience,  sitting  with  throb- 
bing hearts  and  misty  eyes  and  choking 
throats,  pierced  by  the  music  of  the 
Liebestodt. 


Ill 

THE    DANCE 

A  the  dinner  we  have  seen  Society 
saved  from  itself  literally  by  the 
skin  of  its  teeth.    At  the  opera  it 
could  not  save  itself  by  the  skin  of  its 
neck.     What  will  be  its  deportment  at  a 
dance  ? 

Of  all  forms  of  social  entertainment  the 
dance  has  always  been  most  inseparably 
identified  with  spontaneous  gayety. 

Mankind  still  uses  the  ceremony  of 
eating  to  celebrate  its  grief  as  well  as  its 
happiness,  sorrowfully  gorging  on  funeral 
bake-meats  as  readily  as  it  joyfully  bat- 
tens on  wedding-cake.  It  has  always  simi- 
[92] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

larly  used  the  art  of  music,  weeping  to  a 
death  dirge  as  naturally  as  it  laughs  at  a 
music-hall  ditty. 

But,  from  the  fierce  exultation  of  the 
Indians  leaping  round  the  torture-stake 
to  the  solemn  exaltation  of  the  dancing 
choir-boys  of  Seville  pacing  their  meas- 
ures on  the  steps  of  the  High  Altar,  from 
the  jocularity  of  the  jig  to  the  stately 
pleasure  of  the  minuet,  man  has  reserved 
the  dance  as  the  appropriate  expression 
of  his  elation. 

Can  men  and  women,  however  de- 
natured their  instincts,  so  emasculate  the 
spirit  of  the  dance  that,  locked  in  each 
other's  arms,  swinging  through  the  gay 
radiance  of  the  ball-room  to  the  compell- 
ing rhythm  of  the  music,  the  poetry  of 
motion  may  become  to  them  nothing  but 
the  prose  of  exertion,  their  partners  be 
to  their  utter  indifference  nothing  but 
[93] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

necessary  stage  properties  for  the  parts 
that  they  are  playing,  their  hearts  be 
filled  only  with  the  sordid  satisfaction  of 
gratified  rapacity,  their  minds  be  filled 
only  with  the  selfish  schemes  of  social 
exploitation  ? 

These  are  the  questions  which  the  ball 
must  answer  for  itself. 

The  hostess  issues  the  invitations  to  her 
dance  only  a  week  or  even  five  days  before 
the  event.  At  first  thought  this  might 
seem  to  be  a  mistake,  giving  a  suggestion 
of  the  impromptu  with  its  attendant 
geniality  and  informality,  to  what  should 
be  an  august  and  deliberate  ceremonial. 
But  deeper  consideration  will  show  that 
this  very  briefness  of  notice  is  a  circum- 
stance full  of  pomp  and  prestige.  It 
demonstrates  that  the  hostess  is  a  lady 
of  such  calibre  that  she  need  fear  the 
rival  entertainments  of  no  lesser  ladies  on 
[94] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

the  evening  of  her  choice;  that  her  in- 
vitations are  paramount,  to  be  eagerly 
accepted,  no  matter  what  else  her  guests 
had  planned  for  that  night.  The  only 
danger  in  this  method — that  one  of  the 
few  other  hostesses  of  equal  position  with 
herself  should  chance  to  choose  the  same 
night  for  a  ball  of  her  own — is  avoided  by 
each  of  these  hostesses  having  secured  the 
social  rights  to  a  certain  week  in  winter 
for  her  annual  ball,  and  on  this  week 
none  of  her  equals  would  think  of  in- 
fringing. 

The  invitations  inform  the  hostess's 
prospective  guests  that  she  will  be  "At 
Home"  at  half-past  ten  of  a  certain  night. 
In  the  lower  left-hand  corner  of  the  card 
the  single  word  "cotillion"  indicates  the 
reason  for  her  domesticity. 

Commonplace-looking  enough,  these 
little  pieces  of  pasteboard,  and  accepted 
[95] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

as  such  by  most  of  those  who  receive 
them.  But  there  are  some  to  whom  they 
are  of  pitifully  vital  moment,  some  whose 
fingers  tremble  as  they  tear  open  the 
envelope  to  make  sure  that  it  is  this  very 
invitation  which  is  inside,  some  who, 
having  found  their  hopes  realized,  gloat 
over  the  little  piece  of  pasteboard  as 
though  it  were  a  love-letter  or  a  divorce 
decree,  feel  that  their  years  of  Sysiphus- 
labor,  pushing  their  precious  stones  up 
the  heights  of  social  prominence,  have 
reached  their  successful  end  at  last,  feel 
that  this  little  card  is  their  letter-patent 
of  nobility,  feel  that  in  a  moment  they 
have  become  finer  and  loftier  men  and 
women,  worthier  to  take  their  places  next 
to  those  exalted  personages  whom  they 
have  so  long  envied  and  revered  from  afar. 
Thus  can  this  little  card  unloose  all  that 
mighty  passion  which  may  be  entitled 
[96] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

hero-worship  or  called  snobbishness,  as 
an  invitation  is  received  or  not. 

The  night  of  nights  has  come.  The 
lower  classes  of  New  York,  from  their 
Hester  Street  tenements  to  their  Riverside 
Drive  mansions,  are  profoundly  unper- 
turbed. They  go  through  their  routine, 
dining  or  starving,  wining  or  worrying, 
costuming  or  freezing,  sinning  or  snoring, 
without  a  thought  of  the  ball  that  is  to  be. 
In  all  these  lower  classes  the  only  interest- 
ed parties  are  the  hostess's  servants;  the 
caterers;  the  decorators;  the  guests'  maids, 
their  coachmen,  footmen,  and  chauffeurs; 
some  wives  of  millionaires  who,  when  they 
tore  open  the  envelopes  with  trembling 
fingers,  found  that  the  card  inside  was  not 
the  card;  the  orchestras;  some  Society 
reporters;  and  a  couple  of  detectives.  But 
though  New  York  as  a  city  is  unmoved, 
New  York  as  a  Society  is  stirred  to  what- 
»  [97] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

ever  depths  it  can  command.  Such 
functions  as  to-night's  are  not  only  the 
objects  but  the  mainstays  of  its  existence. 
Its  members  in  their  line  of  carriages  and 
motors,  leading  up  to  the  hostess's  door, 
will  sit,  as  much  dependent  for  their 
social  sustenance  on  what  she  will  provide 
as  the  kindred  line  down  on  the  Bowery 
depends  on  its  dole  of  bread. 

In  scores  of  the  palatial  plagiarisms 
which  make  Fifth  Avenue  the  architect- 
ural museum  of  the  world,  the  dining- 
rooms  are  filled  with  unusual  animation 
at  the  prospect  of  the  imminent  event. 
It  is  the  first  big  ball  of  the  season,  the 
first  pitched  battle  of  the  campaign,  the 
first  opportunity  for  each  to  see  exactly 
where  he  or  she  stands;  to  note  the  subtle 
promotions  and  degradations  which  take 
place  from  year  to  year;  to  miss  the 
familiar  faces  of  those  on  whom  Death 
[98] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

has  paid  his  party  call;  to  observe  the 
unfamiliar  faces  of  those  who  have  been 
knocking  at  the  social  door  so  long,  who 
have  just  been  admitted,  but  who  have 
not  yet  been  relieved  of  their  hats  and 
wraps;  to  study  the  fresh  blood — the 
band  of  this  year's  debutantes,  the  bevy 
of  college  graduates. 

In  a  hundred  humbler  homes  French 
maids  are  spreading  out  their  mistresses' 
finery,  while  these  examine  their  deadly 
armory  as  a  duellist  tests  the  temper  of 
his  rapier,  or  the  hair-trigger  of  his  pistol, 
before  starting  for  the  field  of  honor. 
Especially,  in  each  house  that  guards  the 
treasure  of  a  debutante,  is  excitement  at 
the  snapping-point.  Mother,  maid,  but- 
ler, father — all  breathlessly  run  errands 
and  send  messages  on  behalf  of  their 
young  mistress,  who,  pale  but  grim,  nods 
impatiently  at  the  last  words  of  maternal 
[99] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

advice,  thanks  the  butler  graciously  for 
having  hurried  up  the  automobile,  and 
snaps  at  the  paternal  clumsiness  which 
has  almost  placed  a  foot  upon  her  train. 
The  home  of  the  ball  is  of  course  the 
centre  of  suspense.  The  hostess  herself 
is  unruffled.  She  is  a  proud  and  worldly 
wise  lady  who  has  been  giving  her  balls 
year  before  year  as  far  back  as  she  cares 
to  remember.  With  her  wealth  and  her 
position  the  giving  of  a  ball  reduces  itself 
to  a  very  simple  formula.  She  has  quick- 
ly edited  her  last  year's  list  of  guests  up 
to  date,  adding  here,  erasing  there,  as 
deaths,  debuts,  and  divorces  necessitate, 
and  has  with  judicial  discrimination 
elevated  a  few  worthy  outsiders  to  the 
ranks  of  Society.  She  has  then  instructed 
her  secretary  to  address  invitations  to 
the  names  on  her  list.  Having  selected 
the  young  man  whom  she  wishes  to  lead 
[100] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

her  cotillion,  she  has  then  ordered  the 
flowers,  the  food,  the  orchestras,  and  the 
favors  as  methodically  as  she  has  ordered 
the  guests.  It  never  occurs  to  her  to 
speculate  as  to  whether  her  guests  will 
fail  to  enjoy  themselves  any  more  than 
as  to  whether  any  of  them  may  fall  and 
break  their  legs.  Such  worries  she  leaves 
to  the  majority  of  hostesses  who  have 
to  give  balls  for  a  social  livelihood.  As 
for  herself,  it  is  not  a  question  whether  her 
ball  will  seem  a  success  to  her  guests,  but 
whether  her  guests  will  be  a  success  at  her 
ball.  It  may  as  well  be  confessed  at  once 
that  she  is  not  typical  of  most  hostesses  of 
New  York  Society,  but  she  is  typical  of 
what  they  would  all  like  to  be,  and  this  is 
an  occasion  on  which  it  seems  more  mag- 
nanimous to  typify  the  few  ideals  than  the 
many  actualities. 

So  the  hostess  sits  quite  placidly  read- 
[101] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

ing  a  French  novel,  while  the  "beauty 
doctor,"  whom  she  has  imported  from 
Paris  and  has  made  the  fashion  in  New 
York,  kneads  her  face  and  neck  with 
grease,  whose  magic  properties  assure  a 
perpetual  middle  age.  But  while  she  is 
discarding  wrinkles,  her  housekeeper  and 
her  butler  are  acquiring  them,  worrying 
over  all  the  final  details  of  preparation. 
Such  is  the  responsibility  of  the  moment, 
that  they  have  buried  their  chronic  feud 
and  are  cordially  co-operating  for  the 
honor  of  the  house.  Their  trials  are 
multifarious  indeed.  Their  most  decora- 
tive footman  has  found  the  thought  of  all 
the  champagne  which  is  to  be  consumed 
this  night  too  much  for  his  sympathetic 
soul,  and  has  fallen  a  hopeless  victim  to 
premature  intoxication.  A  certain  patch 
on  the  ball-room  floor  refuses  to  wax 
properly,  and  remains  a  Slough  of  De- 
[102] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

spond  in  the  midst  of  its  slippery  environ- 
ment. The  S.  P.  C.  A.  has  sent  an  of- 
ficial to  announce  that  if  one  of  the 
cotillion  figures  consists  of  the  ladies 
offering  live  guinea-pigs,  as  favors,  to 
snakes  held  by  the  gentlemen  (as  prog- 
nosticated in  the  Evening  Screamer,  with 
the  snarling  sycophancy  of  its  kind),  their 
society  will  have  to  stop  the  brutal  pro- 
ceeding. The  word  of  honor  of  the  but- 
ler and  a  pint  of  champagne  are  needed 
to  assuage  this  gentleman's  humanitarian 
fears.  There  is  a  deadlock  as  to  who  is 
to  serve  the  coffee  and  sandwiches  to  the 
coachmen  and  chauffeurs,  which  requires 
diplomatic  handling.  The  detectives 
show  gallantry  to  the  upper  housemaid 
and  the  second  parlor-maid,  instantly 
causing  intricate  domestic  complications. 
But  of  these  sordid  details,  and  many 
more  like  them,  the  hostess  knows  noth- 
[103] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

ing,  as,  with  rejuvenated  face,  she  passes 
from  the  hands  of  the  French  sorceress 
to  those  of  the  coiffeur. 

The  house  is  now  ready  for  the  fray. 
It  beams  and  glitters  with  pride  and  satis- 
faction. At  last,  for  a  few  brief  hours, 
it  will  be  in  its  element,  it  will  be  allowed 
to  perform  its  proper  functions,  to  fulfil 
those  purposes  for  which  it  was  designed 
five  hundred  years  ago  in  the  flood-tide  of 
the  Renaissance:  to  hold  the  crowded 
courts  of  princes;  to  frame  the  gorgeous 
pageantry  of  worldly  power;  to  glow  as 
background  to  its  glory;  to  guard  the 
secrets  of  its  infamies;  to  throb  with  the 
unceasing  rush  of  many  lives,  elbowing 
one  another  through  its  busy  halls;  to 
shelter  and  to  know  them  in  their  pomp 
and  in  their  nakedness;  to  echo  with  the 
sighs  of  love  and  of  satiety;  to  silently 
[104] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

suck  up  the  blood  of  stabbings  and  the 
froth  of  poisonings;  but  always  to  be 
full  of  life,  rich,  vivid,  manifold. 

Poor  house,  designed  for  such  a  des- 
tiny, what  a  lonely,  empty  anticlimax  is 
its  fate.  Its  big  proportions,  its  large 
perspectives,  its  stately  heights  and  monu- 
mental spaces,  which  would  have  stretch- 
ed in  harmonious  welcome  to  throng- 
ing vassals,  courtiers,  functionaries,  here 
frown  in  cold,  forbidding  vastness  upon 
the  void  existence  which  they  contain. 
An  elderly  lady,  her  son  living  abroad,  her 
daughter  married,  holds  her  solitary 
court  within  its  walls,  with  a  nursery  of 
lap-dogs  and  a  negligible  husband  who 
spends  the  days  of  a  dummy  director  and 
the  nights  of  a  dummy  debauche.  A 
well-ordered  lady  whose  life  is  one  of 
dulness  and  of  dignity;  a  remote  lady  who 
welcomes  few  visitors  and  no  emotions 
[105] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

into  her  daily  life;  a  lady  of  power  as 
absolute  in  its  way  as  that  of  any  despot 
whom  the  house  in  its  own  day  might 
have  held,  but  who  never  lets  the  pict- 
uresque or  the  spectacular  impinge  upon 
her  sway,  preferring  the  silent,  certain  un- 
obtrusiveness  of  twentieth-century  power. 
Day  after  day  the  house  yawns  cavern- 
ously,  an  empty  setting  for  an  empty  life, 
while  two  streams,  of  tradesmen  and  of 
trucklers,  leave  packages  and  visiting- 
cards  at  its  servants'  entrance  and  its 
front  door,  and  only  a  few  friends  are 
privileged  to  patter  through  its  echoing 
emptinesses,  to  lunch  or  dine  with  its 
mistress  in  the  comparative  comfort  of 
her  breakfast-room. 

But  to-night  the  house  has  roused  itself 
from  its  torpor.     To-night  it  will  feast 
on  life,  gorge  itself  with  humanity.     To- 
night it  will  throb  with  thronging  flesh 
[106] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

and  blood,  thrill  with  passions  hot  from 
the  hearts  of  many  men  and  women,  stir 
with  plans  and  plottings  cold  from  their 
brains.  To-night  the  house  will  once 
more  come  into  its  own — or  so  it  thinks. 

The  time  has  come.  The  invitations 
have  been  issued  for  half -past  ten.  It 
is  half-past  eleven.  Two  rows  of  foot- 
men in  plush  knee-breeches  stretch  from 
the  entrance  across  the  marble  wastes 
of  hall,  and  up  the  desolate  sweep  of 
soaring  staircase,  two  slender  threads  by 
which  the  first  guests  can  find  their  in- 
trepid path  up  to  the  hospitable  Minotaur 
who  lies  in  wait  above. 

At  half-past  eleven  the  first  covey  of 
guests  flits  in,  finds  refuge  in  the  cloak- 
rooms, and  stealthily  waits  for  reinforce- 
ments. These  early  arrivals  are  un- 
fortunates who  were  not  able  to  get  in- 
[107] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

vitations  to  either  of  the  opera-houses. 
They  have  been  unable  to  pass  the  even- 
ing at  the  theatre  because  to  wear 
decollete  dresses  there  would  be  im- 
proper, owing  to  the  obscure  law  which  in 
our  country  has  until  recently  made  it 
indecent  to  expose  at  the  play  those 
identical  physical  expanses  which  it  is 
obligatory  to  exhibit  at  the  opera.  They 
have  therefore  been  doomed  to  domes- 
ticity, and  have  been  dragging  them- 
selves through  the  endless  hours  since 
dinner,  in  the  arid  atmosphere  of  home, 
nervously  alternating  between  the  easy- 
chair,  the  piano,  the  bookcase,  and  the 
dressing-table.  At  the  earliest  possible 
moment  they  have  shaken  the  dust  of 
their  habitations  from  their  slippers,  and, 
accompanied  by  mother,  brother,  hus- 
band, or  maid,  have  sped  to  the  ball. 
When  enough  arrivals  have  gathered 
[108] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

to  give  one  another  moral  support,  they 
begin  their  advance.  Across  the  hall  they 
wend  their  way  with  stately  tread  and 
dignified  composure.  Then  up  the  ma- 
jestic stairs  the  climbing  cortege  winds, 
its  full-flung  trains  draping  the  steps 
with  glory,  and,  having  gained  the  sum- 
mit, in  glittering  array  sweeps  slowly 
toward  the  hostess.  In  a  great  doorway, 
her  triumphal  arch,  flanked  by  her  mar- 
ried daughter,  she  stands,  an  imposing 
figure,  instinct  with  formality  and  power. 
The  stiff*  lines  of  her  satin  dress,  the  steady 
glitter  of  her  diamonds,  the  rigid  coiffure 
of  her  pale  hair,  the  tautened  crispness  of 
her  skin  (the  victory  of  massage  over 
matter),  her  straight  carriage,  all  show 
the  born  leader  of  women.  Her  guests 
file  past  her  with  the  air  of  sumptuous 
gladiators  crying  dauntlessly:  "Hail,  Hos- 
tess! We  who  are  about  to  dance  salute 
[109] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

thee !"  She,  too,  acknowledges  their  pas- 
sage with  what  is  more  nearly  a  salute 
than  a  greeting. 

Having  rendered  homage,  the  guests 
move  on  into  the  great  ball-room.  They 
stand  for  a  moment  in  little  huddled 
groups  on  the  outskirts  of  its  vast  spaces 
of  polished  floor,  bathed  in  its  bright  light, 
rocked  in  the  rhythmic  waves  of  music 
with  which  the  orchestra  is  flooding  the 
room,  from  its  ambush  of  ferns  and 
flowers. 

This  should  by  rights  be  a  precious 
moment.  Have  they  not  come  to  dance  ? 
Are  their  feet  not  caressed  by  a  perfect 
floor,  are  their  ears  not  tempted  by  per- 
suasive music,  are  their  eyes  not  beckon- 
ed to  by  spaciousness  in  which  they  can 
abandon  themselves  unhampered  to  the 
full  harmonious  sweep  of  movement 
matched  to  melody  ?  They  should  speed 
[no] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

to  each  other's  arms,  and  swing  away 
through  time  and  space  as  exultingly  as 
skylarks  soar  or  eagles  swoop — or  so 
thinks  a  poetic  detective,  standing  in  an 
alcove,  keeping  an  eye  on  the  cotillion 
favors. 

But  this  does  not  seem  to  happen. 
Some  dozen  debutantes,  with  the  enthu- 
siasm of  their  inexperience,  thrill  with 
delight  at  the  spectacle  of  a  floor  on 
which  there  is  room  to  dance,  and,  with 
their  loyal  partners,  glide  ingenuously  to 
and  fro,  enjoying  themselves  prettily. 
But,  for  the  most  part,  in  more  seasoned 
breasts  the  sight  of  the  unfilled  floor 
arouses  feelings  of  despondency.  They 
are  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  loneliness  in 
the  great  room,  a  sense  of  disappointment 
that  more  people  are  not  already  here,  a 
keen  expectancy  for  that  moment  when 
the  room  will  be  choked  with  guests 
[in] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

and  the  night  will  really  attain  its  brill- 
iancy. 

Each  moment,  however,  lessens  their 
isolation.  For  the  guests  continue  to 
march  past  the  hostess  in  a  continuous 
stream,  and  are  already  making  promis- 
ing inroads  on  the  free  floor  space  of  the 
room. 

Surely  the  hostess  has  reason  to  feel 
satisfaction  beneath  her  impassivity.  Her 
vassals  make  a  very  gallant  showing  as 
in  their  silk  and  satin  squadrons  they 
file  before  her  and  deploy  on  the  polished 
field  of  battle.  The  girls  and  women  are 
of  a  higher  average  of  beauty  than  any  Eu- 
ropean ball-room  could  produce.  Stand- 
ing or  moving  erect,  they  show  their 
figures  and  their  clothes  to  better  ad- 
vantage than  they  could  seated  at  the 
dinner-table.  Thrown  together  at  close 
quarters,  amid  the  stimulating  familiarity 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

of  friends  and  enemies,  they  present  their 
faces  to  better  advantage  than  they  could 
posed  in  the  show-case  of  the  opera  box. 
The  men,  too,  are  generally  well-built, 
tall,  and  handsome,  easily  distinguishable 
from  the  waiters.  Only  the  debutantes 
are,  as  a  whole,  disappointing.  With 
childish  faces  and  undeveloped  forms, 
they  seem  pitifully  immature  to  be  pro- 
claimed ready  for  the  responsibilities  of 
life.  But  they  have  been  carefully  coach- 
ed to  a  thorough  familiarity  with  their 
duties  to  Society,  and  are,  most  of  them, 
already  precocious  women  of  the  world; 
so,  as  their  responsibilities  will  be  prima- 
rily social  ones,  they  are  readier  to  bear 
them  than  they  seem.  As  for  the  sub- 
ordinate problems  of  marriage  and  ma- 
ternity, these  can  easily  be  left  to  their 
husbands  and  their  children. 

Now  the  second  orchestra,  which  has 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

been  furnished  to  alternate  with  the  first 
so  that  there  shall  be  no  lapses  in  the 
music,  arouses  itself  from  its  dejected 
attitude  of  waiting  for  the  worst,  and  from 
its  end  of  the  room  takes  up  the  relay 
race  of  melody.  It  is  by  this  time  playing 
to  standing-room  only.  The  great  room 
is  filled  with  a  dazzling  mass  of  fashion- 
able humanity.  Those  who  have  es- 
caped from  the  operas  have  added  them- 
selves to  those  who  have  escaped  from 
the  homes.  The  crowd  stands,  its  mem- 
bers jostling  one  another  politely,  nod- 
ding, smiling,  shaking  hands,  turning  the 
cold  shoulder,  seeing,  making  itself  seen. 
The  dancers  have  become  congested  into 
an  amorphous  mass  which  oozes  round 
and  round.  From  time  to  time  this 
viscous  whirlpool  casts  out  an  exhausted 
and  bedraggled  couple,  and  from  time  to 
time  a  fresh  pair,  united  in  the  holy  bonds 


APPRAISED      FOR      THE      BEAUTY      OF      THEIR      FACES 
OR      THE      BOUNTY      OF      THEIR      FAMILIES 


of  waltz  or  two-step,  wedge  their  way  into 
the  struggle. 

No  one  can  for  a  moment  doubt  that 
the  dancers  are  doing  their  duty.  But 
in  the  seemingly  aimless  conglomeration 
which  covers  the  rest  of  the  floor,  a  useful 
work  is  also  proceeding.  The  debutantes 
are  being  assorted  and  appraised,  for  the 
beauty  of  their  faces  or  the  bounty  of  their 
families.  Men,  attracted  for  the  one  or 
the  other  reason,  secure  introductions, 
chat  a  moment,  and  then  cement  the  new 
acquaintance  by  a  plunge  into  the  turmoil 
of  the  dance.  When  a  girl  has  neither 
the  features  nor  the  fortune  to  lure  men 
to  her  as  willing  devotees,  they  are  never- 
theless led  up  as  vicarious  victims  by 
her  mother,  her  chaperon,  her  brother, 
their  friends.  These  victims  also  in- 
crease by  a  sort  of  compound  interest, 
for,  to  liberate  themselves,  they  frequent- 
["5] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

ly  do  not  hesitate  to  betray  a  friend. 
Thus  the  poor  girl  frequently  meets  as 
many  men  in  her  first  mauvais  quart 
(Theure  as  do  her  luckier  sisters,  passing 
from  hand  to  hand  with  an  alacrity  that 
pathetically  simulates  popularity,  until 
she  may  chance  to  encounter  some  ec- 
centric fellow  who,  even  at  a  ball,  sets 
store  on  cultivated  tastes  or  an  educated 
mind;  who,  perhaps,  finds  in  her  these 
morbid  propensities,  and  settles  with  her 
into  satisfied  companionship. 

All  over  the  room  other  men  are  busily 
engaged  in  asking  women  to  be  their  part- 
ners for  supper  or  cotillion,  or  as  busily 
engaged  in  avoiding  asking  them.  The 
women,  on  their  side,  graciously  accept 
these  proposals  when  they  come  from  de- 
sirable parties.  When,  however,  they 
come  from  men  with  whom  a  dance  might 
be  regarded  as  a  mesalliance,  diplomacy 
[116] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

frequently  becomes  the  order  of  the  night, 
each  lady  suspending  her  would-be  part- 
ner in  that  state  of  benign  and  befuddled 
uncertainty  which  woman  alone  has  the 
skill  to  induce,  and  man  alone  the  sim- 
plicity to  endure,  while  she  awaits  further 
applications.  Accordingly,  as  a  more  con- 
genial partner  presents  himself  or  not,  her 
original  supplicant  is  then  daintily  dis- 
carded or  duly  utilized.  It  is  interesting 
to  observe,  in  this  manoeuvre,  how  closely 
the  lady  follows  the  matrimonial  method. 
Indeed,  it  is  one  of  the  chief  values  of  the 
dance  that  it  gives  its  girlish  pupils  such 
ideal  training  in  this  delicate  strategy. 
For  if  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was  won 
on  the  playing-fields  of  Eton,  the  battle  of 
wedlock  is  won  in  the  ball-rooms  of  So- 
ciety. 

Now,  just  as  the  procession  has  finished 
streaming  into  the  ball-room,  it  begins 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

streaming  out  again  in  animated,  hungry 
couples.  It  feels  that  it  has  conscientious- 
ly completed  all  the  preliminary  work  for 
the  coming  business  of  the  night,  and  has 
deserved  the  rest  and  refreshment  await- 
ing it  at  the  supper-tables  below.  As  it 
reaches  the  rooms  in  which  the  supper  is 
to  be  consumed  it  splits  up  at  the  many 
tables  into  parties  of  six,  eight,  or  ten. 
There  are  a  good  many  of  the  men  who, 
some  from  ill-luck,  but  the  majority  from 
choice,  find  themselves  without  supper 
partners.  These  organize  "stag"  tables, 
and  have  the  bad  taste  to  comport  them- 
selves with  such  evident  enjoyment  that 
many  men,  enthroned  between  grace  and 
beauty,  cast  glances  full  of  envy  at  these 
merry  misogynists,  while  the  ladies'  re- 
gard is  cold  and  stern  at  this  tactless 
proof  of  feminine  dispensability.  There 
are,  too,  some  girls  who  fail  to  secure 
[118] 


REST      AND      REFRESHMENT      AWAIT      AT      THE 
SUPPER-TABLE      BELOW 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

partners.  Of  these  the  majority,  exerting 
that  mysterious  power  by  which  the  snake 
gets  itself  fed  by  the  most  reluctant  bird, 
and  the  woman  gets  herself  proposed  to  by 
the  most  recalcitrant  man,  possess  them- 
selves at  the  last  moment  of  companions 
for  supper.  But  a  few  are  left  irretriev- 
ably without  escorts.  These  poor  victims 
of  their  sex  cannot,  like  the  men,  form 
tables  of  their  own.  All  that  each  can 
do  is  to  disappear  as  swiftly  and  as  se- 
cretly as  possible,  hurrying  home  in  hu- 
miliation for  the  present  and  despair  for 
the  future.  These  are  some  of  the  little 
tragedies  by  which  pathos  can  thrust  its 
way  into  the  most  frivolous  environment, 
to  keep  it  flesh  and  blood.  For  humanity 
can  exist  without  humor,  but  without 
pathos  even  beasts  could  not  endure. 

Supper  is  such  a  long,  elaborate,  and 
varied  meal  that  a  novice  would  prob- 
["9] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

ably  conclude  some  catastrophe  had  sud- 
denly overtaken  the  brace  of  orchestras 
or  the  ball-room  floor,  and  that  this  was 
a  Borgian  wile  of  the  hostess  to  place  any 
further  dancing  hopelessly  beyond  the  de- 
sires or  capacities  of  her  guests.  If  the 
supper  were  to  be  followed  by  an  actual 
dance  the  results  would  indeed  be  calam- 
itous. But  it  is  to  be  followed  by  a 
cotillion,  a  system  of  entertainment  in 
which  the  guests  take  their  dancing  on 
the  instalment  plan,  and  have  time  to 
rest  between  the  watches. 

At  supper  most  of  the  women  eat 
moderately  and  drink  very  sparingly, 
whether  from  scruples  of  conscience  or  of 
corsets  is  immaterial.  Each  of  the  men, 
however,  toys  with  enough  food  to  sus- 
tain a  clerk  for  forty-eight  hours,  and 
sips  enough  champagne  to  send  a  day- 
laborer  to  the  night  court. 
[120] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

The  conversation  which  crackles 
through  the  rooms  is  at  once  animated 
and  detached.  Men  and  women  address 
each  other  with  the  impersonal  loquacity 
of  barbers.  Their  attitude  toward  each 
other  is  much  like  their  attitude  toward 
the  chauds-froids  and  the  galantines  which 
are  set  before  them — familiarity  with  ex- 
ternals tempered  by  ignorance  of  contents. 

After  they  have  accomplished  their  ut- 
termost the  whole  party  wends  its  way 
back  up  the  marble  stairs  considerably 
more  slowly  than  it  tripped  down,  ham- 
pered by  an  alliance  of  the  laws  of  gravity 
and  of  gastronomy. 

When  the  guests  re-enter  the  ball-room 
they  find  the  walls  hedged  by  rows  of 
light  chairs,  each  of  which  is  numbered. 
The  young  champion  who  is  to  lead  the 
cotillion  hands  out  to  all  the  women  slips 
of  paper,  on  which  are  numbers  corre- 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

spending  with  the  chairs.  In  a  land  of 
equal  opportunity  it  might  be  supposed 
that  such  a  pillar  of  the  Constitution  as  a 
cotillion  would  be  conducted  with  malice 
toward  none,  with  charity  for  all,  with 
neither  discrimination  nor  special  privi- 
lege. But,  alas!  as  the  ladies  seat  them- 
selves, a  glance  will  show  that  to  those 
who  have  has  been  given.  Over  each 
choicest  post,  over  each  strategic  position, 
broods  some  corpulent  coryphee,  some 
withered  bacchante,  who  has  come  to  pat- 
ronize and  has  stayed  to  pant.  What  are 
these  poor  ladies,  patently  the  bugbears 
of  a  dancer,  the  nightmares  of  a  lover, 
doing  in  such  prominence  ?  Ask  the  cotil- 
lion leader,  and,  if  he  be  an  honest  young 
champion,  he  will  whisper  that  these  are 
persons  of  prestige  who  are  certain  to  give 
dinners  which  he  desires  the  distinction  of 
eating,  who  are  plotting  cotillions  which 
[122] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

he  craves  the  lustre  of  leading.  So  fa- 
voritism stalks,  winking,  even  through 
these  halls  of  exclusive  equality,  and  only 
too  often  youthful  grace  and  beauty  de- 
spairingly take  a  back  seat,  while  unlove- 
ly influence  and  affluence  puff  and  per- 
spire in  the  van. 

Perhaps  it  is  a  pessimism  induced  by 
such  unfairness  that  drives  a  number  of 
men  out  of  the  glittering  ball-room  into 
the  dimmer  stateliness  of  the  library, 
where  the  books  are  kept  securely  closed 
and  the  bottles  invitingly  open.  Scotch, 
rye,  champagne,  are  the  favorite  master- 
pieces standing  in  their  glossy  glass  bind- 
ings, telling  their  stories  in  serial  form, 
each  chapter  in  a  bumper,  and  each  to  be 
continued  in  our  next.  Here  is  the 
sanctum  of  the  host.  Here  once  a  year 
he  takes  his  place  to  dispense  the  only 
kind  of  hospitality  within  his  grasp. 
[123] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

Highly  starched  and  stupid,  with  a  well- 
valeted  body  and  an  untended  mind,  full 
of  misinformation  and  unassimilated  alco- 
hol, he  sits,  a  long  glass  of  "Scotch  and 
carbonic"  resting  between  his  fingers  on 
the  broad  arm  of  his  chair,  a  fat  black 
cigar  between  his  fat  red  lips,  a  good- 
natured  smile  on  his  florid,  flabby  face. 
Occasionally  he  makes  a  sortie  into  the 
ball-room,  insures  his  presence  there  being 
noted  by  his  wife,  and  then  hastily  re- 
treats into  the  library  once  more,  where 
he  takes  a  fresh  highball,  lights  a  new 
cigar,  and  throws  himself  didactically  into 
any  conversation  that  may  be  going  on, 
with  a  bland  confidence  in  the  authority 
of  his  own  ignorance.  And  he  is  largely 
justified,  for  his  guests  feel  that  a  man 
whose  wines  are  so  sound  cannot  be  far 
amiss  in  his  ideas,  and  swallow  them 
both,  inextricably  intermingled. 
[124] 


NEW   YORK  SOCIETY  ON   PARADE 

Throughout  the  night  the  library  re- 
mains crowded  with  men  enjoying  the 
dance.  Some  are  transients  recurring  at 
frequent  intervals,  seeking  relief  from  the 
ball-room.  Some  sit  permanent,  immov- 
able, glass  in  fist,  cigar  in  mouth,  talk- 
ing gravely,  talking  lightly,  taking  no 
more  interest  in  the  strains  of  waltz  or 
two-step  than  the  dancers  of  the  cotillion 
themselves. 

These,  sitting  in  two  rows  round  the 
quadrangle  of  polished  floor,  are  devoting 
themselves  assiduously  to  the  duties  of 
the  evening. 

The  young  champion  is  leading  the 
dance  with  the  married  daughter  of  the 
hostess.  Together  they  walk  over  to  a 
flowered  recess  at  one  side  of  the  room. 
Willing  hands  from  within  the  recess  load 
them  with  gifts.  They  then  start  round 
the  room  in  opposite  directions,  the  leader 
[125] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

distributing  these  favors  to  a  certain  num- 
ber of  the  ladies,  and  the  daughter  of  the 
house  presenting  them  to  an  equal  number 
of  men.  Then,  to  the  sweet  strains  of  the 
orchestra,  each  possessor  of  a  favor  minces 
across  the  slippery  floor  and  bestows  it 
upon  a  desired  partner.  The  purchase 
price  having  been  paid,  they  droop  lan- 
guidly into  each  other's  arms  and  begin 
to  dance. 

At  this  moment,  surely,  the  dance  must 
justify  itself,  thinks  a  naive  footman 
pouring  iced  punch  in  the  corner.  Here 
is  a  girl  in  the  full  flush  of  her  glorious 
youth  who  has  just  received  a  valuable 
present  in  jewelry  from  a  young  man, 
evidently  given  for  the  pure  pleasure  of 
a  dance  with  her.  They  have  a  clear 
floor,  a  magnificent  orchestra,  an  admir- 
ing audience :  they  have  every  opportunity 
to  sate  that  passion  for  the  dance  which 
[126] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

must  have  brought  them  to  the  ball.  But 
what  is  this  ?  They  have  scarcely  swayed 
into  the  full  rhythm  of  the  waltz  when 
the  leader  claps  his  white-gloved  hands, 
and  they  and  the  other  dancers  halt  and 
straightway  return  to  their  seats.  Does 
the  young  man  look  furiously  angered  or 
the  young  woman  coyly  disappointed  ? 
The  puzzled  footman  can  see  no  such 
expressions.  On  the  contrary,  the  young 
woman  wears  a  delicate  smile  of  gratifica- 
tion at  having  got  hold  of  the  favor  for 
so  little  exertion,  while  the  young  man 
wears  a  well-bred  grin  of  relief  at  having 
got  rid  of  the  favor  in  time  to  pay  a  quick 
trip  to  the  library  before  the  next  figure. 
And  if  the  footman,  the  next  morning,  pre- 
vails on  the  butler  to  expound  this  mys- 
tery to  him,  he  will  surely  scratch  his 
head  at  a  singular  state  of  affairs.  It 
will  appear  that  a  remarkable  number 
[127] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

of  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  do  not  take 
part  in  the  cotillion  for  that  love  of 
dancing  shown  by  some  of  those  young 
ladies  who  have  just  been  making  their 
debut  into  society,  and  by  some  of  those 
gentlemen  who  have  just  been  making 
theirs  from  the  library.  Most  of  the  other 
gentlemen  give  their  favors  to  the  ladies 
not  for  the  sake  of  the  present  dance,  but 
of  the  future  dinner.  They  select  them 
not  for  the  delectation  which  they  arouse, 
but  for  the  invitations  which  they  com- 
mand. They  bore  themselves  with  a 
dance  that  they  may  be  entertained  at  a 
ball,  they  endure  the  monotonous  melodies 
of  the  orchestra  that  they  may  attend  the 
monotonous  harmonies  of  the  opera.  They 
waltz  for  "week-ends,"  and  two-step  for 
yachting  parties.  They  are  no  frivolous 
idlers,  but  ambitious  men,  working  dog- 
gedly to  achieve  their  goals.  Nor  are  the 
[128] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

majority  of  the  ladies  crude  enough  to 
welcome  these  gentlemen  for  their  pretty 
looks,  for  their  polished  dancing,  for  their 
wise  brains,  their  witty  tongues,  or  their 
loving  hearts.  All  that  each  yearns  for 
is  to  have  more  partners  and  more  favors 
than  any  of  her  friends.  To  her  wide 
perspective  these  partners  have  no  more 
individuality  than  does  each  grouse  that 
falls  to  the  sportsman's  gun.  They  are 
merely  partners,  and  every  new  one  but 
adds  to  the  number  of  brace  that  she  can 
finally  count  as  her  evening's  "bag." 
Lumpish  or  limping,  wheezing  or  welter- 
ing, rake  or  relic,  babe  or  blackguard,  she 
grasps  their  favors  and  lapses  into  their 
embraces  in  the  sexless  safety  of  utter 
impersonality.  At  the  end  of  the  evening 
she  certainly  could  not  identify  her  va- 
rious favors  by  the  men  who  had  given 
them,  although  she  might  be  able  to 
9  [ 129  ] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

identify  some  few  of  the  men  by  the  most 
valuable  favors.  For  though  the  men 
mean  nothing  to  her,  the  favors  mean 
everything.  Her  partners  she  values  large- 
ly for  the  negative  pleasure  of  keeping 
them  away  from  her  sisters,  but  the  fa- 
vors that  they  bring  yield  her  the  positive 
joy  of  acquisition  and  possession.  To  her, 
no  matter  what  her  age  or  ugliness,  they 
are  the  trophies  of  her  seduction,  the 
spoils  of  her  charms.  For  deep  within 
her  the  natural  woman,  in  her  death 
throes,  plays  her  this  last  pitiful  prank 
of  making  her  believe  that  every  attention 
paid  her  is  extracted  by  her  own  personal 
alluringness.  She  may  fully  realize  and 
take  pride  in  her  position,  her  wealth,  her 
influence;  she  may  dimly  realize  and  take 
shame  in  her  wrinkles,  her  fat,  her  halt- 
ing conversation.  Yet  if  the  most  notori- 
ous sycophant  pays  her  the  courtesy  of  a 
[130] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

favor,  she  will  live  and  die  in  the  secret 
conviction  that  it  was  paid  because  of 
what  she  was  to  him,  not  because  of  what 
she  could  do  for  him.  But  the  ladies  go 
a  step  further  than  this.  Besides  valuing 
the  favors  as  symbols  of  their  popularity, 
they  prize  them  for  their  own  intrinsic 
value.  The  more  costly  the  favor  the 
keener  in  gentle  bosoms  will  be  the  pangs 
of  emulation  to  secure  it.  They  are,  of 
course,  supposed  to  be  but  sentimental 
souvenirs  of  the  night's  simple  pleasures; 
and  yet  the  more  the  souvenir  costs,  the 
more  tender  will  be  the  sentiment  asso- 
ciated with  it.  It  seems  curious  to  our 
friend,  the  naive  footman,  to  see  women 
who  own  horses,  houses,  husbands,  mo- 
tors, and  jewels  worth  millions,  graduating 
their  cupidity  according  to  twenty-dollar 
differences  between  the  favors'  values. 
Yet  it  is  a  natural  instinct,  consistent 
[131] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

with  the  principles  of  plutocracy,  that 
nothing  can  be  praised  before  being  ap- 
praised, prized  before  being  priced,  or 
deprecated  before  being  depreciated.  It  is 
for  this  reason  that  the  woman  owning 
miles  of  greenhouses  will  set  more  store 
on  a  gift  of  costly  orchids  than  of  fragrant 
violets,  that  she  will  appreciate  a  poor 
dinner  of  dishes  expensively  out  of  season 
more  than  an  admirably  cooked  sequence 
.of  normal  courses;  that  she  will  prefer  at 
a  musicale  to  hear  songs  by  an  exorbitant 
star  with  a  cold  in  his  head  to  the  singing 
of  a  more  modest  artist  in  perfect  voice. 
She  belongs  to  a  Society  which  has  perform- 
ed the  feat  of  lifting  itself  off  the  ground 
by  its  own  purse-strings.  Why  should 
not  costliness  be  her  criterion  of  life  ? 

But  now  the  footman's  bewildered  gaze 
lights  on  one  couple,  clings  to  them  in 
pleasure  and  relief  throughout  the  evo- 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

lutions  of  the  dance,  and  follows  them 
tenaciously  to  their  respective  seats,  when 
their  brief  turn  is  done.  They  sit  at  op- 
posite ends  of  the  room,  both  with  part- 
ners of  their  own.  But  each  time  the 
young  gentleman  is  given  a  favor  to  dis- 
pose of  he  speeds,  as  straight  as  arrow's 
flight,  for  this  particular  young  lady. 
And  twice,  when  the  favors  are  hers  to 
give,  she  aimlessly  flits  toward  points  six 
or  seven  chairs  away  from  his,  but  is 
able  to  find  no  available  recipient  till  she 
has  come  to  him.  She  is  not  so  brilliant 
or  so  beautiful  as  some  other  women  here 
to-night,  he  is  not  so  tall  or  handsome 
as  some  other  men;  but  their  path  to- 
gether seems  like  a  soft  golden  thread 
gleaming  through  the  harsh  weavings  of 
the  dance.  They  tell  a  story  which  the 
footman  can  understand,  tell  it  in  words 
more  subtle  and  more  delicate  than  he  him- 
[133] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

self  could  ever  use  in  making  such  a  story 
of  his  own,  but  words  none  the  less  so  clear 
to  him  that,  with  a  tender  smile,  he  follows 
the  couple's  fortunes  through  the  night, 
and  pours  punch  very  absent-mindedly. 

In  the  mean  time  the  dance  continues, 
becoming  each  moment  more  whole-heart- 
edly expensive  and  enjoyable.  Its  votaries 
in  the  library  swarm  thicker  and  thicker 
in  the  murk  of  cigar  smoke.  Champagne- 
bottles  rise  into  sight  and  disappear  like 
one  of  their  own  golden  bubbles.  Their 
contents  swirl  in  foaming  cataracts  down 
thirsty  throats  to  freshen  weary  bodies 
and  irrigate  parched  minds.  The  host  has 
lost  much  of  his  starch  but  none  of  his 
stupidity.  Men  stand  and  sit  about  with 
flabby,  saturated  shirt-fronts  and  clammy 
pendent  collars,  their  faces  flushed,  their 
eyes  bright,  their  tongues  quickening,  their 
affection  and  esteem  for  one  another  mo- 
[134] 


NEW  YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

mentarily  increasing.  They  beam  with  the 
relief  of  truancy.  Amid  the  pleasures  of 
stimulation  and  recuperation  they  feel 
gloriously  at  their  ease.  Every  now  and 
then  one  of  more  sensitive  conscientious- 
ness than  the  rest  hears,  in  the  distant 
crooning  of  the  orchestra,  the  siren  call 
of  duty,  and,  gathering  himself  together, 
marches  forth,  a  worthy  son  of  Adam,  to 
resume  earning  if  not  eating  his  sweet- 
breads in  the  sweat  of  his  face. 

In  the  ball-room  the  hostess's  distribu- 
tion of  largess  has  become  more  and  more 
handsome.  Starting  with  pretty  trinkets 
that  one  could  pick  up  anywhere  for  five 
dollars,  her  two  almoners  are  now  lavish- 
ing articles  of  real  value  on  the  guests — 
gold  match-safes,  jewelled  scarf-pins,  lace 
sachets,  hand-painted  fans,  silver  picture- 
frames  and  cigar-cases  become  their  per- 
sonal property  in  quick  succession.  The 
[i35] 


NEW  YORK    SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

men,  in  an  ecstasy  of  chivalry  or  cham- 
pagne, bestow  on  the  ladies  not  only  the 
favors  intended  for  them,  but  also  their 
own  favors  with  which  they  have  just 
been  presented.  Those  women  who  are 
popular  for  their  beauty  and  their  charms, 
and  those  who  are  populous  for  their  posi- 
tion and  their  prestige,  sit — when  they  are 
allowed  to  sit  at  all — amid  miniature 
mountains  of  loot,  while  even  the  less 
fortunate  of  their  sisters  have  acquired 
tidy  little  collections  of  precious  odds  and 
ends.  The  former  sit  in  unfeigned  care- 
lessness, knowing,  with  the  arrogance  of 
fortune's  favorites,  that  each  distribution 
of  gifts  will  bring  them  offers  of  more 
than  they  can  possibly  dance  into  their 
possession.  The  latter  sit  with  even 
greater  carelessness  of  manner,  each  chat- 
ting and  smiling  to  her  partner,  languidly 
fanning  herself.  But  who  will  ever  realize 
[136] 


NEW   YORK    SOCIETY    ON    PARADE 

with  what  agonized  suspense  she  watches 
the  approach  of  every  present-bearing 
male;  with  what  wildly  growing  hopes 
she  notes  his  course  narrowing  itself  till 
it  must  surely  be  steered  for  her  alone; 
with  what  boilings  of  fury  beneath  her 
placid,  powdered  bosom  she  sees  him  sud- 
denly, treacherously  tack  when  he  is  al- 
most in  her  arms,  and  add  his  contribution 
to  the  treasures  of  the  grinning  beldame 
to  her  left  ?  She  goes  on  obliviously  chat- 
ting and  smiling  to  her  partner,  she  goes 
on  languidly  fanning  herself,  but  in  her 
heart  curdles  the  stuff  that  tragedies  are 
made  of.  And  tragedies  do  happen,  not 
of  violence,  but  of  miserable  sordidness. 
For  the  temptings  of  inflamed  avarice 
and  the  promptings  of  wounded  vanity 
are  too  strong  a  combination  for  some 
few  women  to  withstand,  and  when  they 
take  their  leave  at  the  evening's  end  they 
[i37] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

carry  amid  their  favors  many  which  some 
other  women,  with  unpleasant  smiles,  have 
missed  from  their  belongings. 

And  now  the  cotillion  has  reached  its 
last  figure.  The  hostess's  daughter  en- 
circles the  room,  handing  out  the  final 
and  most  sumptuous  donations.  The  fa- 
vors are  interchanged,  the  dancers  take 
a  few  preparatory  glides,  catch  the  swing 
of  the  music,  and  waltz  away,  thank- 
ing each  other  profusely  for  the  pleasant 
cotillion  their  hostess  has  given  them. 
Gradually  the  dancing  dies  away,  little 
by  little  the  room  thins  out,  the  guests 
trooping  by  the  hostess  expressing  their 
appreciation  of  the  beauties  and  the  pleas- 
ures of  the  ball.  She  receives  their  thanks 
with  equanimity,  and  watches  them  depart 
with  the  same  aloofness  with  which  she 
saw  them  come.  They  walk  down  the 
stairs,  the  women's  partners  helping  them 
[138] 


NEW    YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

carry  part  of  their  favors  until  these  are 
taken  over  by  their  maids.  Then,  with 
the  proud  consciousness  of  a  night's 
work  well  and  faithfully  performed,  they 
disappear  into  the  outer  darkness  like 
dainty  housebreakers  reeling  beneath  their 
"swag." 

The  bail  is  now  over.  It  has  gone  into 
the  history  of  balls.  The  hostess  feels  that 
her  duty  to  Society  has  been  accomplished, 
her  labors  consummated.  Her  thoughts 
turn  longingly  to  cool  sheets,  soft  pillows, 
the  broken  slumbers  that  are  at  least  bet- 
ter than  unbroken  waking.  Her  head 
aches;  each  false  curl  feels  as  if  it  were 
made  of  iron,  her  tiara  as  though  it  were 
cast  of  lead.  She  feels  the  wrinkles  gnaw- 
ing through  their  shroud  of  artificial 
smoothness,  she  feels  the  skin  collapse 
into  sagging  folds  and  pouches.  She  pulls 
[139] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

herself  together,  and,  with  a  dreadful  ef- 
fort, smiles  as  the  young  leader  of  her 
cotillion  bustles  up  to  say  good -night. 
He  congratulates  her  on  the  success  of 
her  entertainment,  shakes  hands  with  her 
and  her  daughter,  and  hurries  away  with 
the  complacent  air  of  the  doctor  who  is 
able  to  say  that  he  thinks  mother  and 
child  will  now  do  nicely. 

The  hostess  turns  to  her  daughter,  who 
is  standing  waiting  fretfully  next  her,  and 
leaving  her  on  this  monotonous  scene  of 
well-won  triumph,  drags  herself  proudly 
like  a  wounded  lioness  to  the  elevator  that 
will  take  her  to  her  lair. 

What  is  now  left?  It  is  four  o'clock 
in  the  morning;  the  cotillion  is  over;  its 
beneficiaries  have  for  an  hour  past  been 
departing  with  their  profits;  its  leader 
has  left;  the  hostess  is  yawning  in  the 
[140] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON   PARADE 

hands  of  her  maid.  Why  are  the  lights 
still  blazing,  why  is  the  orchestra  still 
playing  in  the  ball-room,  why  is  a  coterie 
of  haggard  maids  still  sitting  in  the  en- 
trance-hall, why  are  rows  of  black  coats  and 
silk  hats  still  hanging,  like  modish  scare- 
crows, in  the  men's  cloak-room  ?  Because 
at  last  the  dance  has  triumphed  over  the 
ball,  the  long  night's  moment  of  vindica- 
tion has  come,  pleasure  has  wormed  itself 
free  from  artifice,  and  swirls  in  exultation 
round  the  room.  In  the  hearts  of  a  little 
band  of  men  and  women  Nature  has  out- 
lived the  desolate  hours  of  fevered  cere- 
mony, and  now  gives  them  her  fresh  and 
fervent  thanks.  The  orchestra  cease  to 
be  cynical  and  jaded  artists,  and  become 
fiddlers,  fiddling  for  them  merrily;  the 
floor  slides  smoothly  underneath  their 
winged  feet,  their  bodies  swing  sinuously 
through  the  throbbing,  flower -scented 
[Hi] 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY   ON    PARADE 

air;  the  zest  of  the  dewless  winter's  dawn 
stings  in  their  veins.  Theirs  is  a  free,  un- 
crippled dance,  of  unthought  figures,  of 
unbought  favors,  the  spontaneous  pairing 
of  men  and  women  for  unpremeditated 
pleasure  in  each  other,  to  share  with  one 
another  the  harmony  of  music  and  of 
motion,  which,  like  the  greater  harmony 
of  love  and  life,  never  yields  its  pleasures 
to  solitary  selfishness,  but  must  be  shared 
to  be  possessed. 

Thus  they  dance  out  of  the  night, 
through  the  dawn,  on  toward  the  sun- 
rise, smiled  on  unwearyingly  by  the 
Great  Hostess  who  is  always  brilliant 
and  never  snobbish,  who  is  tolerant  of 
everything  but  artifice  and  affectation, 
that  eternal  woman  of  the  world  whose 
hospitality  men  call  Life. 


THE    END 


so 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


BRLF 


AUO  I  0  ^ 


SRj 

2  WEEK  LOAN 


'OCT141996 


12  1996 


8  1993 


Series  9482 


!»»!l.™ 


